Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 13))

and manners of human vision. At times it will be appropriate to focus
clearly, at moments to blur. When the contours in nature are intensely
interesting we search closely; when the interest lies in large contrasting
masses , we are more lax. On a golden summer afternoon the eye is lazy,
and all things look a little fuzzy—but only a little. Our recollections of
dreams are very vague; we remember nebulous masses, and the photographer
may, if the subject is in accordance with the sentiment, blur considerably,
thus producing a dreamy effect. But making dreamy images of motifs full
of life is incongruous, because such scenes awaken the interests to their
fullest, and the eye becomes active; and a wuzzy print of any head whose
charm lies in the modeling and chiseling is inane. I do not deny the
occasional appropriateness of extreme fuzziness. I think it ably represents
nightmares, contortions of the mad, and would be thoroughly scientific in
illustrations to Dante's Inferno, and any other representations of agony; for
frequently when the mind is much shocked the blood rushes to the head and
the eye fails to focus. And if any of you are ever fortunate enough to be
present at a murder, throw the plate well out of focus, and develop to obtain
the greatest contrast of values.
The opposite extreme of focus, namely the razor-like edges used so
frequently by the professional photographers of portraits, is also untrue,
because, as has been before said, the attitude of minutely following contours
and details is unnatural to us, except at moments when we wish to make a
microscopic examination. In apparently direct contradiction to the above
statement is the daguerreotype with lines as sharp as possible; but when we
examine them we will find that they are broken by the metallic luster of the
plate; also the daguerreotype, owing to its small size, is intended to be
examined closely with strained eyes.
There are certain possibilities of error in the art of landscape which
photographers easily fall into, one of the most frequent being to focus on
the wrong plane. When we are out of doors and look over the fields and
trees, we adjust our focal vision to the different parts as we move our eyes
from one to the other, and in this way, after a certain time, obtain a conception
of the whole. But the camera is unable to combine time-elements; it has
to choose one plane upon which to focus. Now, many photographers seem
to think that it is of little importance which is the one chosen, as long as it is
the object of interest. It, however, so happens that a blurred image very
frequently presents to the mind the appearance of being enveloped in mist,
and the more obscured it is, the more mist do we feel there to be between it
and us. Therefore, when we see the near foreground in a photograph clearly
drawn, we ascribe the increasing fuzziness in the receding planes to increasing
mist, and feel all to be logical. But when, on the other hand, the distant
foreground, or near middle distance, has been chosen as the focal interest,
we fail to understand why there should appear to be more mist between us
and the immediate foreground than between us and that further away.
Now, Ruskin, in Modern Painters, points out that Turner was
frequently in the habit of focusing on the distance, or even extreme distance;

55