privatebydesign said:
Jopa said:
AF is a critical factor in a photo, no matter how good is a subject, light and composition if the focus is not there, so it's kind of important.
I'd change that to AF is a critical factor in most photos. I was shocked the first time I went to a Steve McCurry print exhibition, it wasn't so much the focus as the fact that nothing seemed to be sharp in any of his older pictures, and the truth is the older ones were far more compelling than his more recent and 'technically better' work.
Well, I personally have quite a few photos that may be not in a perfect focus, but they still have incredible value for me because of who's pictured on those photos. The same can be said about composition and light actually, and pretty much everything else as long as a photo has some other type of "impact" on a viewer, and if the impact is stronger than the imperfections, it's going to be a great photo nevertheless. But... one simply won't give a customer a blurry picture or a picture with a cut leg etc... so it makes sense to take of the imperfections unless we're talking about Steve McCurry or other big shot photography names
Your sample looks great because of contrast, color combination and DoF isolation. The monk is not OOF, I would say it's more like a "soft focus"? IMHO if the guy happen to be in sharp focus, the picture would benefit from even stronger subject/background separation.