Taking the Shot FOCUSING

Focusing

There are a handful of things that Photoshop can’t fix, and one of the most important with good photography is focus. If you take a photo and your focus is off, the photo is relatively unsalvageable. In addition, experimenting with focus is a very quick and easy way to get more creative and artistic with your photography.

Throughout this section, you’ll see that we mention “aperture” and “depth of field.” Please refer to our Aperture & F-Stops section for more insight on this.

What To Focus On

What you choose to focus on has a major impact on the end product of your photography. While it might be tempting to get everything in focus all the time, this is not always the best way to go – especially when it comes to wildlife photography. You actually want some of the photo to be out of the focus. Even with landscape photography, when one would think the idea is to have the entire scene in perfect focus, there are times when you want to isolate only a certain part of the shot and bring it into focus, leaving the rest of the scene with a beautiful blur, or bokeh, to it.

The above photo of two gentoo penguins in Antarctica is a classic example of getting the subject in perfectly sharp focus, with the background blurred. This serves to draw the viewer’s eye toward the subject (the penguins) and minimize any distractions found in the background. For instance, if everything was in focus, the floating iceberg just behind the penguin on the left might blend in with the outline of the penguin, causing a bit of confusion on the part of the viewer as to what he or she is “supposed” to be looking at. Focus helps to isolate the subject from the background.

Yet there are times when you want everything in focus, usually with landscape scenes.

In the above photo, also from Antarctica, it’s rather critical to have both the foreground glacier and the rough background peaks in good focus. Thus, one would want to employ a very large depth of field to cover the immense distance between the foreground and the background. But the question still remains as to where one should focus. Even if you choose a very large depth of field, you still have to point at something to focus on.

With landscape photography, there is a general rule of thumb that you should focus on a part of the scene about 1/3 of the way from you to the farthest point of the photo.

When looking at a large peak and glacier scene like the one above, it’s quite difficult to figure out exactly where 1/3 of the way is, but generally speaking, you don’t want to focus on the closest thing, nor the farthest thing, as one could compromise the sharpness of the other.

Rules are always meant to be broken, and one should not always look at every landscape scene and try to get everything in focus. While you may indeed want to 9 times out of 10, it could be that 10th shot that finds its way on the cover of your trip’s photo album.