A "Sharp" Saguaro Cactus

If you look at the above photo carefully you will notice that the mountains in the background are a little blurry. Would the photograph be better if they were sharp and in focus, like the cactus, or if they were even more out of focus? So, I decided to take the image into Photoshop and play with the Gaussian blur filter. I selected the mountains and land just before them and applied the filter. I then feathered the selection tool and added the area closer to the cactus to prevent a harsh line from appearing. I wanted the blur to look natural. I got the results below.
The difference may be hard to see; in a larger image (more resolution) you can see the difference clearly. What you should notice is that the cactus stands out better in the image where the background was blurred. The sharpness of the cactus remains unchanged. If you look closely at the spines on the side of the cactus that extend into the mountain background you will notice the line where I stopped the selection process. To get a better view of it, and the difference between the images, I put an enlarged section of the before (right) and after (left) images together; you can see the results below.
The original image was from a slide I took around 1995. I have been looking back through many of my images and playing with them. I think if I was to retake the same image I would try to use a lower aperture and make the background even more out of focus; it would have helped draw your eye to the main subject (the cactus) and I think it would have made the spines look even sharper than they are. This is not a plant you want to hug.

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen

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