More Depth of Field

Careful control of your Depth of Field can produce some pretty startling results. I like to shoot with a very “shallow” depth of field, in which just one part of the picture is in focus, with the out of focus areas pushing the viewer’s eyes to the most important part of the picture. This is most easily done by using a telephoto or zoom lens and an “open” f/stop, such as f/5.6. The textbook goes into this issue in more detail.

Here are two recent examples of mine: notice that in the guitar picture your eye is forced to this singer’s face, because both the background and the foreground are out of focus. And the picture at the Nats baseball game last summer speaks for itself (in a sexist sort of way!)!!

(You can click on the pictures to get a larger view, which shows the DOF impact more dramatically.)