This image after a several month hiatus is an unusual one for me as it is not in focus for you. When thinking of this past difficult summer after my mom's passing and perhaps an unfocussed period in my life, this image makes total sense to me. As I was having lunch the other day at a local park, I was looking up and trying to get an image through the sunroof of this large London Plane Tree that would capture the light that was streaming through it. After a while without visual success, I just about gave up with it all and took off my glasses to rest. Looking back up into the tree, the image I wanted was just before my eyes, not obscured by the lenses that are normally present between my eyes and the world.
Wearing glasses since I was young, they are a normal part of my everyday life, mostly annoying (especially as I am now getting to the bifocal stage) in that I don't have the freedom to wear sunglasses and such a regular folks, but once in a while, when I remove them, a scene is presented to me that makes me feel really blessed with poor eyesite. Sometimes the light just dances and sparkles and the unsharp spots of light and color are nothing short of dazzling and warm. In seeing this beautiful mix of greens, yellows, browns and blues above me, I knew I had to try and make a image that would be match for what I am seeing without the 'corrective lens' of the sharpened world. This is not some photoshop creative filter, but just me shooting and testing the image on the spot against what I could see with my naked eye. Sometimes when I see things in this 'blurry' state, I think of Claude Monet and his Impressionistic work and wonder whether he needed glasses and just didn't know it and actually painted what he saw in his world, I doubt it and am in no sense comparing myself with Monet, a true visionary and master of light and form, but I would like to think that perhaps he was also blessed with less than perfect eyesite as I am. It is a world and an image that perhaps you with perfect vision will not understand, but for those of us less perfect, we do. Perhaps my 'unfocussed' period is over, maybe not, but today I found perfect clarity in an unsharp world.
