Learn from the Masters

The Illusion of Photo Sharpness
in Fine Art

While photographers achieve photo sharpness through the mechanics of the lens and camera, fine artists have many techniques for achieving sharpness, or the illusion of sharpness.

This page explores painterly approaches to focus to give you a historical context for approaching photo sharpness.

Sharpness and Focus in Fine Art

Portrait of Minister Johannes Wtenbogaert (1557-1644), Rembrandt, 1633. Housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. (from the Wikipedia Commons)

Of all the common art and photography concepts, photo "focus" would seem to have the loosest connection with painting. After all, there is no lens with which to adjust the plane of focus or depth of field. Nor is there a shutter whose speed affects the freezing (or blurring) of motion.

Yet, painters can work with focus and depth of field, and they can give the illusion of motion or frozen motion without our contemporary mechanics. They can also be selective about focus, creating multiple planes of focus, in ways that photographers find difficult, if not impossible.


Focal Plane and Depth of Field

Painters simulate focus with precision of brushwork and exacting use of line. For example, examine this 1633 portrait of Minister Johannes Wtenbogaert, by Rembrandt. As is important with photographic portraiture,

Detail of Rembrandt's Johannes Wtenbogaert

Rembrandt puts the eye in focus and the wrinkles around the eye. More notably, he extends the depth of field to include the whole face, from the tip of the nose, to the curl of forehead hair sneaking out of the hat, to an illusion of focus on the ear and hair over the ear.

Extending depth of field even further, the entire ruff collar is sharply defined, as well as the hands and the edges of the fur coat.

If this were a photograph, with the low amount of light, it would be challenging to achieve the same range of photo sharpness from front to back.

Detail of Rembrandt's Johannes Wtenbogaert

In Focus, or Not

Rembrandt plays a painter's trick on us with the open book on the stand. The book is sharply defined and appears to be entirely in focus - yet another extension of depth of field. Then, when you look at the text in the book, sharply defined brushwork gives the illusion of an out-of-focus, hand-written manuscript. In a photograph, if the book were in focus, the text would be in focus. But, the artist has the freedom to mix in-focus and out-of-focus elements, and even use in-focus elements to be suggestive of a reality that may not be there.

Detail of Rembrandt's Johannes Wtenbogaert

"Bokeh"

"Bokeh" is a photographic concept that describes the quality of the out-of-focus areas in a photograph - those areas that lack photo sharpness. Photographers find it desirable that these areas smoothly blend the background colors, with no sharp highlights or shadows.

With the wall behind Minister Wtenbogaert, Rembrandt achieves what photographyers would call a smooth bokeh, using an area of subtly-changing warm and cool grays to highlight the dark-cloaked figure. The smooth bokeh of the background provides this contrast without drawing attention away from the figure - which is a key characteristic of good bokeh.

Note: The letters and numbers, "AET:.76", indicate the age of Rembrandt's subject.