I almost think I like this stage the best! I save these late summer blooms to fill vases and they've stayed lovely for a couple of years now! Your photo is gorgeous, and the reason I love them so!
This is very pretty Taffy especially the bokeh! My favourite garden shrub because of the beautiful flowers all through the year in their ever changing states. I am not sure I understand the technical difference though between soft focus and out of focus? I spend my life getting my subject in sharp focus and am disappointed when it is soft! Perhaps this is just me?
Lovely tones Taffy, a soft and bit of a melancholic feel to this.
@pamknowler according to Wikipedia: 'In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges; it is not the same as an out-of-focus image, and the effect cannot be achieved simply by defocusing a sharp lens.'
So in soft focus detail is reduced but the lines of the various shapes are still sharp, when out of focus the lines will be blurred too. Soft focus often creates dreamy like images, but that's not everybody's cup of tea.
@pamknowler according to Wikipedia: 'In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges; it is not the same as an out-of-focus image, and the effect cannot be achieved simply by defocusing a sharp lens.'
So in soft focus detail is reduced but the lines of the various shapes are still sharp, when out of focus the lines will be blurred too. Soft focus often creates dreamy like images, but that's not everybody's cup of tea.