Dealing with
Out of Focus Foregrounds I
f out of focus foregrounds don’t bother you, then this article won’t be relevant to your photography. However, I find them to be terribly distracting. When foreground elements are soft in front of a sharp subject, our eye is constantly diverted away from that subject to the blurred parts of the image, trying to focus on them. That usually ruins the photograph. A clear case in point is the portrait of a wolf, below. The out of focus background is fine.
Because the forest behind the wolf is so undefined, that forces our attention on the subject. However, look at the tree. It is blurred just enough to be visually annoying. I used a Canon 300mm f/2.8 lens for the shot, and the lens aperture was set to f/4.5. This relatively large f/stop was perfect to blur the background, but the shallow depth of field made the tree too soft for this to be considered (at least by me) a successful picture. Now study the image on the next page. The
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