Location Taken: Harrisburg, PA
Time Taken: July 2010
It was the end of our long trip across two countries. We were almost home, after a side trip up to upstate New York to pick up our dog from the friends who were dogsitting her. Then, just after a traffic jam on Interstate 81, our car started acting weird. One of the tires felt… spongy.
And then there was a small thump and our car was tilted. We had a flat tire.
We pulled off to the side of the road, and started working on switching it for the spare. A friendly police officer (probably checking on the traffic jam uproad) pulled over and helped. Given how fast he was at it, he probably helps a lot of people with flat tires. We also asked for advice on where to get it fixed.
Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, which in the US, means a lot of smaller stores are closed. Including all the mechanics in the area, apparently. So we drove on back roads, moving slowly because our spare was one with a maximum speed allowance of 40 mph (about 65 kph), until we finally ended up at an Auto Center in Harrisburg, PA, about 36 miles (58 km) from where we started.
It was very hot that day, somewhere near 100OF(38oC), and we had a dog with us. We couldn’t just leave her in the car while we got things sorted out, so while dad talked to the people at the auto center, I walked the dog around the area. There was a shady spot with a bit of grass and trees on the other side of the building, so I sat down with her for a bit.
And there, on the side of one of the trees, was the discarded husk of a cicada.
So I, of course, took a picture of it.
I really like the photo, so I was devastated to open it up on my computer later and see that the focus was just enough off to bug me. The screen on my camera was not detailed enough for me to see that the husk was fuzzy in the photo.
When you’re doing close-range photography, you’re dealing with short focal lengths, where only a plane of half an inch, or less of space is crystal clear while the surrounding areas are blurred. This is called Depth of Field.
This blurring is actually rather useful in photography. It isolates the subject, making it easier to make it the focal point of the picture, the spot where the eyes are drawn to naturally in an image.
However, this still requires the focus to be right on the subject, rather than, say, a quarter-inch off.
There are some fancy cameras that can adjust focus after the photo’s been taken (such as the Lytro), and the Photoshop people are working on some fancy new algorithms to remove some of the blurring from photos. However, I am still unemployed. I can’t afford experimental cameras, or even a version of Photoshop made in the last ten years (I’m still using Photoshop 7, the last one before they started calling it “Creative Suite”, and no, I’m not going to download an illegal copy).
So, for now, this almost-perfect photo will have to stay almost-perfect.
