I've been playing around with the concept of taking an out of focus bird photo that somehow works. I find doing more "artistic" things like this are really hard to judge how they will be received. Of course, I understand the whole concept of shooting for yourself and not your audience, which is mostly what I tend to do, but it is nice to get honest feedback with certain photos. I have wondered to myself when sharing this sort of photo if it will be enjoyed or disliked simply because it is different or because it has merit to it and maybe elicits some emotion for the viewer. My hope is the latter. A short while back I shared a photo of a Common Loon that was out of focus behind some grasses and it didn't quite work for me. This time I have a Northwest Crow that I was working with. Initially, I was taking normal portraits of the bird as it sat on a nice perch. It stayed there for a while squawking away and allowed me to move around to find different positions. I eventually made my way around to a spot with a bunch of distant trees with light filtering through them. Knowing that might be some fun bokeh I lined up the bird with the spots of light and took a shot. It looked great and more interesting than the smooth dark green I had in the previous backgrounds. I went to take another shot when the focus missed and slipped far back and then in front of the bird. When I saw this out of focus image through my viewfinder it looked awesome to me and so then I grabbed the focus ring and made it out of focus on purpose and started trying to line up the bird in the bokeh. I darkened the exposure as well to make it more of a silhouette. It had a dark sort of dreamy feeling when I shot it and I was hoping that might translate into the final image. In post, I pushed the white balance a bit more blue to make it look like night and that was it. So here it is, a purposefully out of focus shot that for me elicits some emotion when I view it. Does it do that for you or just confuse you or hurt your eyes?