Allison

For example, take the romance genre. Structurally, it commonly includes two people who fall in and out of love two or three times during the course of the film. Their difficulties often seem huge, though sometimes simple misunderstandings are the cause. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, they are nevertheless usually completely in love at the end. Stylistically, this genre includes low lighting, soft focus, sometimes beautiful settings, and music that might at times be raunchy and at times soft and romantic.

http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/exp_lang/genres_and_conventions.html

Soft focus effects are common in fashion and advertising images, but are not widely used for landscape photography. The landscape photographer is usually aiming to capture the sharpest possible image with the greatest depth of field, and using a soft focus filter would normally be counterintuitive. However, in certain circumstances a soft focus treatment of a landscape can enhance the mood of an image by creating a soft glowing atmosphere, and can be particularly effective for backlit subjects. Soft focus is not the same as out of focus, and is not about degrading the image, but rather about subtly changing the image to convey a desired interpretation to the viewer.

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