FUCK FOCUS

Focus is overrated, it’s not a criteria per se. What is important is the emotion of the photo.
It’s something I realised when I made this photo 6 years ago.
The photo shows us some women, dancing, having fun. The fun radiates from the picture. Making us laugh too!
It’s this emotion that’s the most important thing. We’re close to the action. We can almost touch the girls and participate in the dance.

This closeness and the joy of the moment gives this photo it’s strength. Who cares it’s not completely sharp. It’s not a product photo of a kitchen blender!

The photo was one of the first photos I made from the famous PenJa’m sessions. Improvisation sessions of dance and music. The jam was held in a bar in Cabanyal, Valencia. It was sparsely lit and with all the action going on I had to shoot wide open and with the lowest shutter speed possible.

Shooting photos of dancers in the dark is a challenge and it gave me a learning curve in photography as steep as the Grand Canyon!

But it was fun. I loved making photos during these sessions. As the jam sessions themselves where fun, and open. There was a real feel of underground art going on. The sessions where only known by insiders. Strange sounds where produced by the musicians and the dancers reacted upon it, experimenting and having fun.

These sessions taught me that there are lots of other things to take into consideration when making interesting photos. And a subject in focus is not always a mandatory. A photo does not always have to be sharp to be a good photo.