turning off the auto focus

Aubrey, Oscar and I headed to the beach yesterday to skip and collect cool shaped rocks. I brought my DSLR with me to snap some photos of Oscar. Partly through snapping I ended up switching off the auto focus. It's something I've experimented with over the years. By turning it off, and manually adjusting the focus, you can keep things slightly blurry. (or really blurry depending on how much you adjust it) I did it at Christmas time in this post and really liked the effect. And the Summer of 2011 I experimented with turning off the auto focus while walking through the forest as you can see in the first shot. Looking at the photo of Aubrey and Oscar above reminds me a wee bit of a print in Thom Fillicia's Lake House. (I especially love this one) It's amazing how switching off the auto focus and blurring things just a wee bit, can make a photo more beautiful.  Just a little something creative that is super easy to do.