Attention and Auto-Focus

Something about the power of turning it off.

Photo by Jasper Garratt on Unsplash

Routine photography became much easier with the advent of autofocus, even if those of us for whom it was a novelty took a while to really trust it. A few decades later, it’s almost invisible. I can manually focus my iPhone, but I’m unsure how many people do.

Autofocus carries a cost. When we manually focus, we have taken note of what we are looking at, really looked at it, and decided what part of it we want to make the central focus of our image. What we focus on sets the context and tone for the entire photograph and determines what people looking at it are drawn towards first.

I thought of it as I woke up this morning. 05:45 and Farming Today on radio four. A gentle and always thought-provoking fifteen minutes before the six o’clock news. I trust Farming Today and am happy to be on autofocus with it. When it comes to the main news, though, it’s different. The BBC seems to have succumbed, tiny piece by tiny piece, to the pressure of numbers of ears a…