Three layers

At Terneuzen, strolling along the Westerschelde. 

While sitting on a breaker and enjoying the sun I decided to create a photograph where I would force the attention on one single pane in the picture, using the depth of field, or better the lack of depth-of-field.

The two people on the beach would be the main focus point.

To achieve this I tried to have the first pane, the foreground, sufficiently close to the camera to be blurred and I could only hope that the subjects in the third pane, the ships, would be enough out of focus as well. I use a rangefinder camera, so I could only check if my attempt worked out after the picture was taken.

This was a '50mm day', meaning I went out with my 50 mm Summicron attached to the camera and nothing else. Selecting only one lens can be very liberating and forces you to focus on a pictures content and not on what lens to select for your next photograph. You have no choice, which is a good thing, you can concentrate on that what really matters.

Fortunately this lens is state of the art en will perform admirably fully open so technical image quality was no concern. This technical excellence should never be the end goal of a photograph, but technical issues can distract from the way you want to convey your story.

I manipulated the colours later using Lightroom and Photoshop, but that was all.

Worked out nice, I think.

Leica M10