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<p class="gutenify-section-1977a160-e222-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">While we are enjoying or suffering from a glut of imagery on social media, photographers with an artistic bent are looking for ways to do something different -- not for the sake of difference alone, but to make the viewer see things more intensely, or more reflectively.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-55f63bb0-e222-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">I am a member of several photography groups on Facebook, and a lot of the imagery I see is good, technically, but uninteresting. Pretty girls, yep, who doesn't like to see them. Landscapes that are breath-taking -- but you can only have your breath taken so many times.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-895ca660-e222-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">Some of us are turning to old lenses, and old technology. <a href="https://shotkit.com/wet-plate-photography/">Wet collodion process</a> is returning, for example.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-medium is-resized gutenify-section-7371c540-e224-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/MathisFugeray-wet-collodion-1-222x300.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-9647" style="width:354px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photographer: Patrick Van den Branden, Belgium</figcaption></figure>
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<p class="gutenify-section-fd576fd0-e224-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">The <a href="https://lensbaby.com/pages/effects">Lensbaby company</a> is making lens with deliberate "defects," like the Velvet 56 that I use, to reintroduce diffusion to images. (They're not <em>blurry</em>; it's something like a haze, under which the image is still sharp. It can be incredibly beautiful, especiailly in "high-key," or bright, images.) Lensbaby also makes the Spark lens, which I also use, and which has selective focus. That means, practically, that I have to bend the lens (which is on a rubber bellows) and compress it towards the camera body, to put the part of the visual field that I want in focus. It's challenging, and you can never the same photo twice.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-83f4cd30-e225-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">What does this do, for the viewer? Vincent Versace observed that the eye is drawn to the bright over the dark, to areas of high contrast over areas of low contrast, and to the sharp over the blurry. Selective focus lenses let the photographer direct the viewer to what the photographer thinks is the main point of interest. A smiling face may be in high contrast, and sharp, and the rest of the image may become increasingly low-contrast and blurred as the eye moves away from that. </p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-0d6b7760-e228-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">Art is often a process of abstraction: you take things away, you simplify, to make a strong visual. Increased contrast erases detail. Black and white does the same abstraction: so the eye is arrested by an expression, a gesture. I caught my wife in this shot, playing with the grandkids. The star-shaped specular highlights (the bright spots in the bokeh, or blur) were created by an insert in the front of the lens. The area of highest contrast is her face, and the area around it. There is a vignette, or darkened border, partly created by the lens and partly by post-processing software (Lightroom, most likely).</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-3d337080-e226-11ee-934e-0d45b546ab10">Recently my middle and third daughters' families came together for two children's birthdays. They have 14 kids between them, so it happens often enough, and it's a lot of fun. I brought my camera with the Spark lens and fired away. Here are the  results. Again, simplification, abstraction, makes for arresting imagery.</p>
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