Grasses over the Merced

Very effective use of simple elements.  The contrast between the sharp grass and blurred river is especially effective.

Long, I think you would almost have keep the wat we soft for this to work. Would be too much detail and viewer might have difficulty deciding what the subject was vs.the context of the image. There is enough sharp grass that the soft areas not a problem for me.

I'm loving this Lon!  The shallow DoF works great and the reflected BG color makes the image IMHO.

Lon, I took several looks at this image until I decided to write a comment. At first I was surprised and maybe a bit confused to find some of the blades of grass blurred. Admittedly, I had expected they were all in focus and brilliantly sharp. Taking a second and third look, I was more and more convinced by the kind of immediacy your image conveyed to me this way.

Finally I summarized for myself, that this composition would work best as part of a photo essay, rather than standing alone as single image. Maybe because there are only few points for my eye to rest and so I cannot focus my attention for a long time. Hope this makes sense to you.

Thanks for sharing this interesting work.

Peter

Thanks for the comments and observations so far.

@Peter, thank you so much for your honest observation.  Honestly, I have similar thoughts and was wondering if anyone would comment, so I appreciate that.  Many of the blades are of course oof focus as a matter of dof and the wide open aperture. But more than that, you're right, there isn't a main one to act as a focal point.  Although interestingly, the more I look, the more I see that the sharper blades of grass - are all the ones that are bent/broken. And if I look long and hard enough, maybe those bent blades are focus enough?

In the end it may be one of those images that simply strikes us all differently.

Thanks!

I am enjoying this one very much, Lon. Takes some effort to study and this is precisely what draws me to this photograph.

Beautiful and simple. The shallow DOF works really well and the soft grasses are not an issue for me. 

This image is an excellent example of using elements that we often find distracting and messy or busy, and assigning them as the main subject.  Kinda like lemonade. It's quite interesting and that background really sings in support.