For 2023, I have signed up for an online photography class. Each week there is an online lesson and a challenge to produce one image using those techniques.

Lesson no 1 has been a gentle introduction. The challenge is to take a photograph in which the main subject is in sharp focus, and other elements blurred, i.e. using very narrow depth of field. I took a photograph of a chess board set up in The Queen’s Gambit position, and here it is. The colour image is the original – we are under strict instructions not to process the image in any way, and this is what I uploaded to the class page. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to play around, and so I present the processed black and white version as well.