Sexy Alicia in a photo with a medium depth of field.
One of the first things I learned about photography was to understand how the right depth of field (DOF) in my photos can enhance my photos. When one uses point & shoot cameras, most of the time the people or things in the pictures are all in focus. This is due to a large aperture setting like f/11 or so. Get your first DSLR or higher end point & shoot, and you’ll soon find that by changing the aperture setting along with your distance from your subject, certain things will and will not be in focus. Trust me, this is a good option.
When you want a subject to be in focus as well as the distant background, then you need a large DOF and your must make sure you are not too close to your subject. Too get something in between, then a good example is the photo on the left. I photographed the sexy Alicia to illustrate how I can manipulate the DOF to my advantage. Having her against the fence, I wanted the viewer’s eyes to be drawn to three areas, her face, cleavage and the narrowing fence leading away from her. I shot it at 40mm, f/7.1 and 1/500th sec., I also cropped it a little.
Alicia wearing a sultry dress looking in the mirror.
For the photo of Alicia on the right, I placed a mirror a few feet to her left and away from me. This time shooting at a focal length of 50mm at f/4.5 and 1/125 sec., I was able to have her torso on the left in focus and blur out her reflection in the mirror. Using the similar setting, I could have focused on the reflection having it in focus but then her torso on the left would have been blurred. By the way, I used Aperture Priority settings for all these images.
Photo of Alicia with a narrow DOF
In my last example, I took a close-up of Alicia against a plain tin wall. Shooting directly against the wall would have revealed the texture of the tin too much, so I shot it at an angle. Since I photographed her close up, I needed to blur out the far and near portions of the tin wall. I shot wide open at an f stop of 2.8, with a focal length of 80 mm and a shutter speed of 1/250. This allowed me to make Alicia’s face the main focus point of the image.
So next time you’re out taking pictures with your new DSLR, take it off of Program mode. Experiment with Aperture Priority or Manual mode and create great images with various depth of field settings! Finally, I’d like to thank Alicia for modeling for these pictures.
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