What a camera cannot do - Monet!

In this time of High-Definition TVs and high resolution cameras, one of the most important keywords is SHARPNESS.
Of course there is a wide range of visual styles and individual tastes, but if we want to talk about "our era" we have to compromise the variety and focus on what is mostly shown and seen in mass media: photography.
The way I see it, there are mostly two ways to take a photo
1. using the focal point and bokeh to concentrate the visual on one object/layer.
2. overall sharpness.
The latter of the two ways is the dominant form of photography nowadays, especially in commercial products. Contrast, vibrant colors and sharpness as if to pierce your eyeballs is the most important aspect of how we are getting to look at images - TVs nowadays have the option to filter in more of these three aspects without concern about the original work.
Here is an example I found via a quick Flickr-search:

The landscape is pretty sharp and the subjects are so sharp it is irritating. Of course this is an amateur work, but it shows how people are craving for this sharp look.
Then there are JDI`s president Kataoka-san`s pictures, which are really neither of both and thus have a unique feel to them:

That`s a whole different world of photography!

But there is one thing that photography cannot do - subjective focus!
What we are nowadays craving for is a realistic feel - we have a taste for photos. But the way we actually see the world is not really like a photo - the human being focuses in a different way.
Oscar Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) tried to paint pictures the way humans see the world - impressionistic. It is not realistic of course, as the name of this art school is saying, but expresses what one saw (and to some degree felt) at a particular moment.
Take a look at Monet`s "San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk":

The landscape is not defined at all, one could say. It looks like the image I get when I squeeze my eyes together. But this is enough to give me an idea of the scene. What catches my attention though, is the reflection of San Giorgio in the water and the bright and hard spots of light on its surface. By adding this accent - you could call it sharpness - just into those specific places, we can feel and understand what is important in Monet`s picture.

Another example is Monet`s "Houses of Parliament, Sunset". The whole scene is very soft with the excpecation of a few fine lines of whiteness around the clouds on top, rendering the sharp and bright light of the sunset very clearly

This technique is something a camera just cannot deliver and is really impressive in my opinion.
By the way, I also took a picture of the Houses of Parliament - but who doesn`t when one is there? :)

Yours,
Manuel