Out of Focus Backgrounds

04. ACHIEVING DEPTH OUT OF FOCUS BACKGROUNDS ARE IMPORTANT

THEY SHOULD CONTRIBUTE TO THE STORY but not steal the show. The focus should point to the important parts of the image. Capturing the essence of a three-dimensional scene in a two-dimensional photo takes an understanding of camera settings.

DEPTH OF FIELD: Cameras can only focus at one point. Depth of field is the distance between the closest and farthest objects. It is a product of three settings: your aperture or f-stop, the distance from the subject to the camera, and the focal length of your lens. Use a wider aperture or a smaller f-stop to get a more shallow depth of field and a smaller area of focus. Doing this will blur what is closer to the camera than the subject and farther from the camera than the subject. This blur creates the illusion of depth.