I used to say this line...'focus is overrated'...to compensate for the fact that my pictures were always a little softer than everyone elses in photo school. My eye sight and inability to hold my nikon fm2 still enough made my pictures just a little less sharp than they should be. This was something I had to fix when I started getting paid to take pictures for a living. And it wasn't easy--I had to really concentrate on the technical aspects which was making it more difficult capturing moments and seeing compositions. But when I got that down and started melding the technical with my eye my work became much much better. But I still think sometimes sharp pictures aren't as good as some moment captured that are less sharp. Yesterday I made this picture shooting it off the rear view mirror in my car through the back window in the rain--it might actually be in focus, but the stuff I'm going through makes it not look so, but it gives a feeling that a sharp picture of the same scene wouldn't have. Its like an impression more than a document. It remends me alot of those post impressionist and impressionist painters pushing mark-making to new directions in the art world---they were blamed for making out of focus paintings too. Photograph by Richard Sayer.