Some of my most frequent advice is to shoot through a scene. As a younger photographer, I would give up too easily and put the camera down too quickly when my efforts weren’t met with immediate success. “It’s not working,” I would say, when the truth was closer to “I’m not working.” I wasn’t giving the scene the time and effort it almost always needs to be coaxed away from the obvious. Or worse, I’d get what I thought was “the shot” and then move on to something else, missing all that was to come.

That has changed over the years, and I think much of the credit for my best work belongs more to my patience and perseverance than whatever talent I might have. What I have learned is to shoot through a scene quite faithfully.

But this isn’t about that. I’ve just returned from six weeks in southern Africa, shooting in forests, thickets, and SFG (Stupid F-ing Grass—a very technical term) that always seems to be in front of whatever beauty I have found. You spend hours looking for a subject, then more time finding a composition, then even more waiting for light, and when you’ve done all that? There’s always sh*t in the way!

To make this easier (???), my Sony cameras seem to have a grass-priority mode baked into the focus, making sure that if there’s a blade of grass within 5 kilometres of the scene, it’ll be in sharp focus. Especially if that grass is not my subject (it never is), and even more so if my subject is beautifully lit and I really, REALLY want the camera to focus on it quickly. Thanks, Sony.

The camera company that can figure out a “don’t focus on the d*mn grass” function can have my heart and my money, forever.

So what do you do? The short answer is: shoot through it. There are a lot of ways to get around the grass problem and, when they work, turn foreground crap into a strong part of the image, rather than a distraction.

The Sony system has something called full-time DMF (Digital Manual Focus), and when it’s on, you just help the AF out a little by nudging the focus manually. Sometimes it works; other times it just bounces back. Nikon doesn’t call this DMF or anything else because it’s just how their lenses work right out of the box. If you’re in AF, you should be able to just manually tweak the focus to essentially tell the camera, “You’re close, but focus on this instead.” If you use Canon, it’s buried in the menus and only works in AF single-shot, which is lame. For other systems, you’ll have to do your research, but feel free to report back to me. Either way, I’m pretty sure it’s a little hit and miss.

You can also just flip your lens to MF and work entirely manually, but that’s a drag. Still, it can sometimes be your only workaround. If you do that, be sure to use focus-peaking to help you really nail it.

I’ve also found that just sticking with AF but trying to focus on elements that are closer to the subject, and then moving the focus point to the subject and trying again, gives the camera a better starting point. 50% of the time, that works every time. If the grasses are much closer to you than the subject, it might also help to limit the focus range on your lens. This is usually accomplished with a physical toggle on the side of the lens. My 300/2.8, for example, will let me shoot the full range (2m to infinity) or only 6m to infinity, preventing the lens from searching through the 2m to 6m range and getting hung up on closer grasses, etc. . Just be sure to toggle it back when you’re done.

If you’re really struggling with this you need to know you’re not alone. It’s an issue, and a constant struggle and the best you can do is know your options, practice them all, and be patient. Why not just give up? Because there is so much to be gained.

Here’s the thing: if those grasses (leaves, branches, whatever) are that much closer to you and you’re using a relatively wide aperture, they can almost be ignored by the lens—even if they’re right in front of the lens. The more distance between your subject and SFG, the more your lens can blur it, elevating it to attractive patches of light and colour and giving your image texture and depth, or a window through which to frame the image.

For the past two years, I’ve been very intentionally putting these branches and leaves (and even SFG) in front of my lens. Sometimes it really doesn’t work. But other times, the lens looks right through them or around them, giving you a clear spot in the frame, with the rest of the crap now acting as blurry compositional elements. It’s all very counterintuitive.

All that time learning to get a clear shot has us convinced that stuff in front of my lens means no shot. Sure, sometimes. But often not. I am amazed what you can shoot through, especially when the SFG is closer to you than to your subject.

I think the best thing I can do is include some photographs to illustrate the point. They should explain themselves, but what they cannot show are the gymnastics I had to do to get the camera into just the right spot so the SFG (or whatever) is also in the right spot in the frame. Not all blurry elements contribute to the image. And they can’t show you the thousands of frames when this results in total failure. Or how much the scene just didn’t look like this before I blurred the heck out of it. But if you’re shooting in circumstances where there’s a lot of crap in the foreground, don’t give up until your efforts to shoot through the scene also means shooting through the vegetation. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, but when it does, the photographs are worth the effort.

Questions about this? Drop a note in the comments. I’m around through to the end of September and happy to talk about this or anything else that’s on your mind.

A Personal Note

Two weeks ago, I ended up having an emergency appendectomy instead of flying off to photograph bears. So many of you sent notes to wish me well, and I want to say a heartfelt thank you for your care. The recovery went well, and I got some much-needed naps in. I also read a book—and finished writing one. 

I have read The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf, twice now and it was even better the second time around. It’s a biography, really, of one of the most interesting artist/scientist/adventurers of the last couple centuries. Once the most famous scientist in the world we have largely forgotten about Humboldt but this book brings his life and legacy back to us. Beautifully written, highly recommended. You can find it on Amazon here. (What do you think, are interested in hearing what I’ve been reading? Let me know!)

Last week I got my last chapters written and submitted my new book to the publisher and I am thrilled to finally set the production in motion. WildLight, A Personal Approach to Photographing Wild Things will be my 15th book (16 if you count the 10th Anniversary Edition of Within The Frame), and it should be available in March! I’ll let you know when pre-orders are open, but it’s coming! Thank you—again—for giving me an audience and supporting my work. 

For the Love of the Photograph,
David