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Comment by caillou | Hacker News Reader

Strange. Why is every single one of these photos out of focus?

The only portrait that appeared OOF to me was that of Susan Hurley. The rest look fine. Was there another one in particular you thought was OOF?

The artist does appear to use a large aperture (or some other technique) to control depth of field. So there are portraits where the background is blurred, or in some, even parts of the subject (hands vs face). But, overall, they're mostly all in focus.

Being a little out of focus and rambling around is a philosophers thing.

Using a lens with a shallow depth of field to create a bokeh effect.

They're not?

I see what the poster means. Parts of each face/head are out of focus. I dunno shit about photography so don’t know the term for what’s going on, but it looks like the camera was set so only about an inch-deep section of the shot would be in focus.

The resulting image looks more intimate. If the photograph was 10 feet away and zoomed in, the face might have the same scale but the entire face would be in focus. The actual image was shot much closer with a shallow depth of field, which even without thinking about it is perceived as the viewer being very close to the subject.

It is amazing how little of our field of view is in focus. Hold up your hand at arms length and look at your thumbnail so it is in focus. Notice that the part of the thumb immediately below the thumbnail is out of focus unless you move your eyes to look at it.

Yep, that's a technique in photography - common for portraits.

This photographer is employing an unusually shallow depth of field in some of these photos. You gotta have a gimmick.

They're all taken by the same photographer and thus exhibit a consistent style

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