Fun with Focus

One of the reasons I wanted to get a DSLR camera was so I could manually focus my shots if I wanted and even have better control over the auto focus. Here are a couple shots I had fun taking while paying attention to how I was focusing.

The above shot was taken in Caseville, Michigan. It was a bit tricky to get, but when I saw this lamp post, I knew I wanted to shoot through it. Thankfully, there was a dock in the distance I could focus on (colors tweaked in Photoshop).

autofocus fail

An earlier shot in which I didn’t focus correctly. Boring.

I took a bunch of shots with the dock in focus, heck, I even lugged out my tripod and gave that way a go. But, with it being a cheaper tripod, adjusting the shot how I wanted was difficult–and the uneven ground didn’t help at all. But, I soldiered on and finally got a shot I was happy with. I think the final shot at the top was one I just did hand-held for the heck of it.

This one was snapped in downtown Caseville.

I saw this colorful trash can that was open on both sides, and decided I wanted to shoot through it, for a sort of frame in a frame, uh, thing. I’ll admit that I’m not too happy with how this turned out, as there is too much junk (pun not intended) on the top and sides. I could have cropped it different, and I may go back and do that, but I was afraid it would be difficult to see this was a trash can.

I enjoy shooting through objects like the lamp post and the trash can, it can make for interesting images, although images that can be a challenge to get. Regardless of the challenge, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for future shots such as these.