Audience

In photographing an audience, the temptation is often to go wide — to show the collective body, the sea of faces, the shared focus. Here, I chose the opposite: a tight, side-on profile of three individuals, all absorbed in what unfolds beyond the frame. The decision to compress the moment into this narrow slice has the effect of isolating their concentration, making it almost tangible.

The focal point rests squarely on the man in the centre. His expression is unreadable yet engaged, his glasses catching just enough light to reveal his eyes without introducing glare. The woman to his left, partially hidden, offers a second layer of depth, while the man on the right is thrown deliberately out of focus, becoming a soft foreground element that both frames and obscures. This progressive shift in sharpness — sharpest in the centre, softening toward the edges — draws the eye with precision.

Technically, the image works within a shallow depth of field, requiring careful attention to the point of focus. The exposure is on the warmer side, lending a softness to skin tones while keeping background distractions muted. There’s a slight fall-off into blur at the back of the frame, which helps isolate the subjects further, though it demands an accurate hit on the focus point to avoid losing clarity. In this case, the focus is just tight enough to carry the central subject without appearing clinical.

Compositionally, it follows a gentle diagonal: the blurred figure in the foreground anchors the right edge, leading the viewer’s gaze across to the crisp profile in the middle, and then tapering off into the subtler features of the woman on the left. The crop eliminates all environmental cues, forcing the audience — both the photographed and the viewer — into a moment of shared attention whose object remains unseen. The ambiguity is what holds the frame together.