I was doing some bird photography yesterday and obsessing, I do a lot of that, over image sharpness.  I need to remind myself that sharpness isn’t everything, witness the image of the chamber maid by Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, Montmartre, ca. 1906, which we have previously discussed. And in looking through the usual candidates for great pictures of the week, I came across this amazing shot by Fully Handoko for EPA showing Indonesian villagers atop the crater of Mount Bromo in Probolinggo, Indonesia on August 12th.  These Tengger Hindus were celebrating the Kasodo ceremony, an expression of gratitude to the gods for a good harvest.

Fogginess, absolute fogginess! The people are reduced to mere silhouettes in the darkness.  For some reason, I am particularly drawn to the man on the horse.  You could crop him out and make a wonderful picture of that alone. The image seems to speak of the confusion of life on Earth and the clarity of heaven, as the pictures moves our eyes from dark murkiness to brilliant clarity, bottom to top.  Here the lack of sharpness seems to bespeak a mystic sacredness.  Remarkably, despite the fogginess and its flatness, we get an wonderful sense of the enormity of the scene. And, we seem to be in an impressionist world, where the vision isn’t quite clear until there is an explosion of light..

Usually in contemplating such a religious scene, we would comment on its timelessness – the fact that it could have been taken at any point in, perhaps, the last five hundred years.  But alas, that is not the case.  Two of the participants are taking pictures with their cell phones.