It would be easy to think that I photographed the coneflowers at Grant Street Pier because they captured my attention. White petals, orange centers rising up through a haze of purple. Anyone would have raised a camera. But that’s not really what happened. Not even close.

My wife doesn’t like having her picture taken. Never has. She refuses to stand still for a portrait, often making a silly face each time. So I’ve learned to work around it, and this was my workaround: I aimed at the flowers and let her drift into the background, soft and unfocused, almost an afterthought. Almost.

The camera doesn’t lie about what it’s pointed at. Technically, the coneflowers are the subject. They’re the thing in focus, the thing that would still hold if you cropped everything else out. But a photograph and the photographer know things the camera doesn’t. Look at that image and your eye doesn’t stay on the flowers. It drifts to the blur in the back, the shape that’s a person, and it sticks there, unconsciously. And that’s what I wanted.

A photograph can be perfectly in focus and still miss the point, or out of focus and somehow find it.

Jeff Turner

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