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Dawn Michelle Photography |
It's OK to Be Shallow
December 2008 |
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Hello! Did you have a great Thanksgiving? Our family did. It was nice and quiet and did not involve much shopping (which is fine by me).
I discovered a great new slideshow tool that I'd like to show you. This slideshow link will be up on the website soon. I am also using it to show clients their images. You can purchase yours and make as many copies as you'd like. If I have done your portrait session in the past, I can create one of these slideshows which can be played on a computer or even on a DVD player. If you'd like for me to make you one for Christmas, please let me know soon. Thanks to everyone for allowing me to use your portraits in the video!
I will be here for most of the Christmas break, so if you'd like some family or children's portraits during that time, please e-mail today or call me at 214.783.9691.
Dawn Attebery
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It's OK to Be Shallow
Once, when I was in my 20's, I took a
trip out west. Armed with my brand new Nikon camera set to
auto-everything, I came upon a very strange looking flower that I was
itching to photograph. The background was desert. I wanted to focus
on the flower and, as I put it, "throw the background out of
focus". I'd seen this done a million times in photos. The problem
was that I had no earthly idea how to do it. That was a long time
ago. Now, I absolutely know how to do it and you don't have to spend
another sleepless night wondering what to do because I'm going to explain it to you.
The topic of the day  is depth of field.
In short, depth of field is how much of your scene is in sharp
focus. A shallow or small depth of field means that very little is
in focus and a lot is out of focus in a photo. I often use a shallow
depth of field when photographing a single child. Notice that the background is completely out of focus:
A scene with a
large depth of field has a great deal of the scene in focus.
Landscape photographers often use a very large depth of field,
ensuring that the foreground, mid-ground, and background are all in
sharp focus, like this photo of pottery:
For a given lens, the two things that
control depth of field are the aperture (f-stop) setting of the
camera and the distance from your subject. As you move closer to the
scene, the depth of field will naturally decrease. For example, if
you photograph a small flower from about 6 inches away, your depth of
field will be very shallow. But if you photograph it at 2 feet away,
you will have more depth of field. (The problem is that your flower
might not fill your frame anymore.)
That being said, you have to
ensure you have enough light at the aperture you want to shoot at, so
your shutter speed and/or ISO will vary according to what aperture
you want. If you want a large depth of field, you'll have to shoot
with a small lens opening (like f22). If you have a shutter speed
that lets in very little light, you might not have enough light for a
proper exposure. You will have to adjust your shutter speed (or raise the ISO) to let
more light in (a shutter speed of 125, remember, is actually 1/125th
of a second). If you require a shutter speed of 90 (1/90th
of a second) or more (by more, I mean, for example, 60, which is
1/60th of a second), you will likely need a tripod to
avoid camera shake.
One good way to practice is to set up
at least three small objects (maybe 3 soda cans), staggered front to
back, stand about a foot away, and focus your camera on the middle
object. Take a picture of this at different aperture (f-stop) settings and
see what is in focus and what is not. Practice this a lot and you
won't have to think so much about it when the pressure is on. It
will become part of your mental checklist when you take a photograph.
E-mail if you have questions!
Dawn
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