Why the Sharpest Photo Isn’t Always the Best Photo

As nature photographers, we tend to have an obsession with tack sharp photos and will do almost anything to increase the sharpness just a tiny bit. After all, looking up close at a sharp photo of a dragonfly is one of the greatest rewards of photographing the natural world

But, sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a little sharpness for a better composition.

As an example, consider the photo above of a Desert Sunflower in front of a patch of Desert Sand Verbena (see original size photo too). There are three reasons why the sunflower isn’t as sharp as it could have been:

1. The wind was blowing pretty hard, and constantly swaying the flower
2. The camera’s sensor was not parallel to the most important plane of the flower
3. A pretty large aperture was used (f/5.6), which limited depth of field

Of course, the wind was out of my control, so all I could do for that was wait for the calmest moment possible. But, the other two were in my control. Why didn’t I address these problems?

Well, if I put the camera in a position where the sensor was parallel to the flower, then I wouldn’t have had the all-purple background. It would have been a mixture between green, brown, and a few blotches of purple. All these colors would have distracted the viewer and it wouldn’t have created as strong a contrast as the purple alone.

And, if I chose a smaller aperture to get more depth of field, then the background would’ve been a lot more in focus because it wasn’t too far away (only a few feet). I did take a test shot to see what it would’ve looked like if I increased the f-number by one stop to f/8.0:

Even just a one stop difference significantly changed the background from a nice seamless purple into a distractingly blotchy background.

Another thing to consider is the final print size you’re looking to make. Yeah, my flower photo here would look pretty blurry if printed at 30×20, but if I print smaller, then I can take advantage of sharpening through resizing. With flower photos, I think an 8×10 print is large enough, maybe 16×20 max?

So, consider your composition first, and then setup your shot to maximize sharpness of that particular composition. Don’t sacrifice your photographic vision just for a sharper photo.

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About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, computer scientist, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of Southern California.

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