Focus on the Eyes W
hen photographing an animal or a person, or even an insect for that matter, the general rule is to focus on the eyes. It can be acceptable for other parts of a face to be less than tack sharp, but the eyes have to be in focus for the picture to work. In the shot of the cheetah, below, you can see the eyes are sharp but the nose and the ears are somewhat soft. Would I have preferred for the entire head to be tack sharp? Yes, but the image
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is successful as it is now. Many photographers don’t understand depth of field clearly. For example, when a subject is relatively far from the shooting position, clients on my tours ask me if they should focus on the eyes. At some point, it’s not feasible to focus on the eyes because the subject-camera distance is such that depth of field has increased beyond the point where you can distinguish between
