Until July 2017, documenting the seasons of coastal Dorset. I'm a complete amateur so don't trust I'm always right. If ever you see I'm wrong - whether with identifications or in anything else - do say! Meanwhile . . . I've now moved to Halifax in West Yorkshire. Click on the link below to collect the new URL. Don't forget to follow there!

Tuesday 17 May 2016

THE OUT OF FOCUS BRIGADE

Slim apple branch with unopened blossom with a snail on the underside of a leaf.
Snail on an apple tree twig.
Loose and Leafy is primarily for wild plants; street plants and plants of the hedgerows. (Insects too.) From time to time I visit an open-to-the-public kind of garden. Rarely do I show photos from an ordinary garden belonging to an ordinary house. I haven't for ages.

The centre of an apple blossom flower.
Blurry apple blossom
This afternoon, I was meant to be sitting outside, drinking tea, chatting, with music in the background. 

Music is difficult outside. You need it loud enough to appreciate but quiet enough not to bother neighbours. With a bit of fiddling around the sound was perfected . . . and it was all very pleasant.

Part of a bright green, scented geranium leaf, showing its veins.
This scented geranium leaf is not specially blurry but the light pointed it out.
But I can't sit long if there are things to see - even if I'm meant to be engaged in relaxed and friendly chatter. And this afternoon there was a special kind of atmosphere. A storm is brewing and it's taking a while to get to the break-out moment. Sometimes, before a storm, the atmosphere goes clear and everything, even at a distance - especially at a distance! - can be seen in more detail than usual.

Well, having built up your expectations . . . it wasn't that kind of light today. It was . . . not exactly hazy . . . but not quite as clear as it is most of the time either. And there were unaccountable little patches of brightness; a leaf here and another there which seemed to have been out to buy batteries and had turned on torches of their own.

Light shining through a new and upright hosta leaf.
Out-of-focus hosta leaf
So up I got, left the tea on the table . . . and pottered off to look at leaves . . . and things.

But, as I say, the light was odd.

I can't remember having posted out-of-focus-photos before. But this is what I'm doing here. I could pretend I was using some special technique or camera setting; but I wasn't. They just didn't come out right.

At the same time . . . by chance . . . they show what it was like this afternoon. Initially I chucked them aside. But I kept coming back to them. And I like them. There are different kinds of beauty.


(All photos in this post taken on the afternoon of May 17th 2016.)

6 comments:

Angie said...

I could do umpteen posts filled with out of focus pictures Lucy. Your's don't look particularly bad compared to mine.

Hollis said...

Beautiful hosta leaf, Lucy! That's a wonderful shot.

Janet/Plantaliscious said...

I find photos that capture a mood or moment the hardest to take, much b easier b to take in focus close ups of pretty plants. So the fact that these did v the job makes them very worthy of posting about! Strange light on foliage is very distracting in a social setting. I get distracted by plants in the background of shots in TV programmes. I lose the plot in more ways than one!

Janet/Plantaliscious said...

I find photos that capture a mood or moment the hardest to take, much b easier b to take in focus close ups of pretty plants. So the fact that these did v the job makes them very worthy of posting about! Strange light on foliage is very distracting in a social setting. I get distracted by plants in the background of shots in TV programmes. I lose the plot in more ways than one!

Lyn said...

I love apple blossom our trees are heavy with flowers at the moment. xxx

Lucy Corrander Now in Halifax! said...

Hello Angie. I specially like the out-of-focus pictures in this post. I think they have a special atmosphere that's not present in crisper versions. (I have photos too where the out-of-focus-ness destroys rather than adds to the image!)

Hello Hollis. Glad you like the hosta. Hostas don't last long here in such a pristine state. One almost needs an armed guard to keep slugs and snails at bay!

Hi Janet. The time I'm most distracted by plants is when I see them in kerbs and on walls. I post about them from time to time but it's pointless to take all the photos I would like - especially because there's such a narrow range of varieties which will grow in such inhospitable places. I have to keep my hands away from the camera and resist the temptation to keep saying 'oh look, there's another sow thistle'!

Hello Lyn. Do you think it's a specially apple-blossomy year? My eye keeps getting caught by it when I'm travelling around.