Sharper Is Better – Until It Isn’t

The Nestor family holds their reunion every year in Misterhult, Sweden, on the first weekend of August. In the nearby town of Virserum, there is a market with a complimentary carnival that same weekend. Inspired by some photos I have seen recently, I decided to shoot some from the hip.

I used to shoot from the hip a lot with my old original X100. I knew that rangefinder camera by heart. It sports a 23mm lens, and I usually shoot my X-T3 with the 35mm f/2 lens. The 23mm is wide enough for some cropping when adjusting the composition in Lightroom. It is forgiving to use.

The 35mm, however, leaves less space—depending of course a bit on how far you are from your subject. But I finally got the technique down, kind of.

Since I started my amateur photography journey back in 2007-2008, like many, I have chased perfect sharpness, exact focusing, and keeping everything straight and level. All within a cheap and affordable price range.

Then I went back to photo books to study the masters this summer. The Robert Franks of street photography. The Annie Leibovitzes of portrait photography. Perfect sharpness and perfect alignment with focus dead center in the subject’s eyes suddenly felt reserved for advertorial—and amateur—work.

I mean, I am disillusioned and know very well that I am still a happy amateur and probably never will be anything else. But this realization awoke something fun and exciting about photography again, and I am shooting more than ever without necessarily focusing (pun intended) too much on exactness and instead more on being true to an idea or to the subject at hand. The camera comes with me in my bag to work and on my hip for walks in town with the family.

Those moments of inspiration where the hobby suddenly feels new again are crucial for creative “work.” They make it fun. It is almost like getting new gear. And inspiration can certainly be a tool—therefore getting new inspiration is a lot like getting new gear. God knows it is cheaper with inspiration than cameras and lenses though.

That being said I feel more than ever that I miss analog photography. The film grain, the uncertainty—did I focus and expose the picture right? It gives the end result a certain flair and, in my eyes, even certifies the picture as an investment in not only time but also money. A picture costs money. You have to invest in taking each picture.

See, film is so expensive that you can’t afford to toss too many shots out. Instead, you have to make do with what you have and try as best as you can to fix it. Work on the highlights, vignetting, and so on to help it along. At least that is the way I saw it, shooting film. As an investment and a way to force me to work for the picture, both before and after pressing the shutter release. But like I said, analog comes with imperfections.

That is why I think mist filters and added grain are so popular today. They push the picture into the realm of imperfection. In this day and age, when near absolute sharpness can be attained with a decent lens and a decent low-to-midrange camera, inflation has stricken.

Sharpness and a perfectly frozen moment are not the only attributes of a good picture anymore, which it has felt like for a while. And for that, I am grateful. Bring back good pictures—sharp or not.

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The Nestor family reunion takes place on the farms and houses around the small village where my grandmother grew up and my own children are now the 8th generation Nestor to walk the trails around the fields on the hills surrounding our lots. History made a big impact on me as a child and I think that my love for imperfections to some extent comes from spending time in these old hand built houses, seeing hand built furniture with marks of the hand that made them. You can track time and effort in the wood where the wood plane hit a knot in the pine.

I often miss this trace of reality in all things modern. Plastic makes me gag. Leather, wood and metal shows wear and the scratches read the past like a book. Analog photography is similar in the way it is perfectly translated reality on to a semi organic medium.

Near missed focus, grain and lack of perfect sharpness bring me back into the feeling of a picture being real. Even if it is just an illusion. Im fine with that. Film is just too damn expensive.