The Long Focus

Though I thought my on-line photography class was going to be about photography, I’m  finding it to be so much more. This week we are challenged with “long focus” photography - a technique that keeps all areas of the photo in focus, regardless of their proximity to the photographer.

Long focus has never been my “thing”!
In life or in photography, I have lived my days very open to the immediately accessible and enjoyable. I have written before about finding inspiration within an eight-foot radius of where I am at any given time. 

I’ve rarely planned for events in my life; things have happened and I have embraced, accepted, or wondered at most of them. It has been satisfying and rarely disappointing. The counterpart, and perhaps safety net, to all this has been my husband and partner in life. He does the long-term planning while I (hopefully) make our days interesting. I thank him for our retirement and security.

​This week I took pictures of railroad tracks, cemeteries, and  cityscapes. Though it was hard for me,I tried to compose each using something other than close focus. I realized so many of my previous shots were done with zooming in on a detail or object, with a depth of field that lets most all else dissolve. The first challenge was on using “selective focus” which was a piece of cake but this one, not so much.

During my hiatus, I’m also hoping to add more “long focus” to my life. Age has a lot to do with this. When I was young, time was very abstract. There was almost too much of it to comprehend.  But as I get older, I realize that the future is finite! This is also true for my physical self. My young body responded, rebounded, recovered, but now the warranty is ending for some parts. 

The idea that the future may be becoming one with the present is something that is dawning on me. Perhaps a bit of planning may be in order. I guess I could skip that cake/cocktail/chips for the possibility of more future. I guess walking a couple miles today, might up the odds for my being able to still walk a few years from now. 
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Like they say “aging is not for sissies” and I have never been called a sissy!

Here are some long focus shots for you:

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