THE SMALLER THE DOT…

Joseph @ R. L. Cook Park, Ruston, LA (09JUL2022)

One of the purposes of my 50 Shots a Day project is to help me discover more about focusing, for I have struggled with the various focus modes on my cameras. There are at least five different focus settings, varying from auto-everything to large wide-area to pinpoint single-point. When photographing Joseph at a playground on Saturday, I was working mostly with the auto-area setting where the camera detects and tracks what it thinks is the focus of the frame. I wound up getting more and more frustrated as I wanted to capture him behind the bars shown above, but the camera kept insisting that it was the bars I wanted in focus (because the bars are closer to the camera than Joseph.)

As I was thinking through how to resolve this situation, I realized the problem I was encountering was not that I was focusing on the wrong thing. No, the problem was that I needed to go from the auto-area to the smallest possible focus area, a single sensor. For one of the only times I can remember on a playground, he actually sat still long enough for me to switch settings to get the right shot with him in focus, and nothing else.

The lesson I drew from today’s photo was not only is it important to know on what you should focus, but it is equally important to make sure you are in the right setting so that what needs to be is in focus, and nothing else.

How often do our lives get way too complicated, confusing, or painful simply because we have too much other stuff in focus, with that stuff keeping us from getting picture-perfect focus on what is most important to us in that specific time in that specific place for that specific purpose?

Grace and Peace, Lamar

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