Using Depth of Field in Portraiture
I wanted to get a quick shot of this cute little baby (we had just done a larger family reunion and were wrapping things up, but I just couldn’t resist this “over mom’s shoulder” grab shot as she was walking away) but the background was not pretty and the light fading fast, so using a wide open aperture (that is a smaller f-stop number for those of you just starting out) I was able to blur the background and just focus on her face. Learn your f-stops and shutter speeds so that you can quickly make the proper choices to either sharpen or blur your backgrounds based on the look you want to achieve (obviously in landscape images you may want a greater depth of field to get details in both foreground and background, but as a general rule for portraits you want less detail in the background so that the eyes stay on the faces in the portraits. Take your camera OFF the AUTO mode and play with apertures and shutter speeds until it all makes sense for you. Have fun…
Categorized In: arizona | children's portraits | photography | scottsdale
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