Out Of Focus

Last Spring, after experimenting with photographing some wildflowers, I had written a post about purposefully throwing an image totally out of focus and making the photograph an abstract of form and color with no clearly defined shape. These are the images I had taken at the time.

Columbine
Copyright Howard Grill

Buttercups
Copyright Howard Grill

Recently, I was again experimenting with this idea, but was trying to work with it a bit differently. Rather than throwing the image totally out of focus, I threw it out enough to make it clear that the image was not simply poorly focused, but yet not far enough to totally loose the sense of underlying shape. I found the results to be compelling and very dreamlike in appearance, akin to the 'shoot through' technique where one places petals or other colored objects very close to the front of the lens while focusing on something a bit further out.

Floral Dream
Copyright Howard Grill

I am not quite sure if I am totally there yet, but find that I do like experimenting with this sort of image making and think it holds potential for conveying what I want to express while going 'beyond' the idea of selective focus and shallow depth of field. Does anyone else see anything interesting emerging from this, or am I just kidding myself here?