What am I looking at here? (seemingly selective focus)

[Homebrew]

Check out the photo accompanying this story about LeBron James. LeBron is nicely focused, the other players, the ref and the basket are unfocused. OK, cool -- nice control of depth of field to make the subject pop, right? But then look at the crowd immediately to James' left (as you look at the picture). Sharp focus back to the cheap seats! On his right they're out of focus, as expected.

What am I looking at here? Post-processing (I thought that was pretty much verboten for news photography)? A fuzzy gel over the lens (or in it -- I assume the lens was long enough to require one of those in-lens filters)? Lighting trick? Or something else?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Note to mods: I placed it here because I don't know what's going on. I decided against the sports pics forum because my question would be the same if it were a judge or a celebrity or a tree. If you think there's a forum where I'd be more likely to get an answer of course I'd be grateful if you'd shoot the thread over there. Thanks.

[Homebrew]

According to the Getty site, it was "created with a variable plane lens." And I guess using it is OK as long as it's disclosed, because that phrase appears a lot.

So I guess the new question is "What is a variable plane lens?"

[dakwegmo]

It's probably a tilt-shift lens, such as a Lensbaby.

[OsmosisStudios]

If you believe Getty, its done using a tilt-shift lens (CHACHING!). Im betting on some post processing though.

Postwork is verboten in news photography if it alters the subject, content, etc. In this case, its purely stylistic.

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

If you believe Getty, its done using a tilt-shift lens (CHACHING!). Im betting on some post processing though.

Postwork is verboten in news photography if it alters the subject, content, etc. In this case, its purely stylistic.

It's not post, it's a T-S.

Post isn't verboten. Edits that change the content of a photo aren't allowed. Color corrections, sharpening, denoising, exposure adjustments, and even dust removal with the dreaded clone tool are all perfectly normal.

[inkista]

Just another voice adding to the choir: it's a tilt-shift lens, using swing, not tilt, which is why it looks so weird.

In tilt, the axis of rotation on the front of the lens is horizontal, and you get blur at the top and bottom of the frame, if you're reducing the DoF. This tends to have a closer "look" to the normal DoF you get from a wider aperture because in most composition, near/far and top/bottom of the frame coincide.



With swing, the axis of rotation is vertical, and you get blur on the sides if you're reducing DoF. It tends to look stranger, because near/far in composition goes from right to left in the frame less often; you only tend to see it if your camera's at an oblique angle to the subject, and most of the time, we shoot straight on.



BTW, for the curious, I got rid of the green fence in the second shot by adding rise (shift upwards) to the lens movement. I'm short. I was already standing on a fire hydrant when I took the first shot. Shifting downwards is "fall". "Shift" by itself generally means shifting to the right or left. Yes, I'm a technical writer. I like to know the nomenclature.

[Homebrew]

Aha. I knew you guys would solve the mystery. I guess I have a lot to learn about art -- I thought the shot looked very weird and awkward, and this guy's a big-shot pro working for the NBA and winning all kinds of "shot of the year awards." In any event, thanks for the help.