FOCUSING

Above is an example of when limiting the depth of field makes part of the scene a bit out of focus. Here, the foreground is blurred, which accomplishes several things. First, it draws the viewers’ eyes to the subject of the shot – the gemsbok in the middle of the photo. Second, it minimizes any distraction from the textures and colors of the grasses in the foreground (further drawing the eye to the subject and the beautiful red and brown mountains in the background). Lastly, and most importantly, it creates a sense of vastness. And, when photographing in the Namibian desert, you certainly want to portray the vast expanse of its wilderness!

When the wildlife is the main part of the scene, you naturally want to get it into great focus. Here, focusing on polar bears, it’s not all that important whether the willows are sharp and in focus. Since they’re a relatively uniform texture and color, they wouldn’t detract all that much from the bears even if they were in perfect focus. Nevertheless, because this was “an action scene,” I needed to increase my shutter speed to freeze motion. As a result, the camera had to compensate by limiting the depth of field such that anything too far away from the camera got out of focus.

It goes without saying that you should focus on the bears for this shot. However, there is a lot of bear in this shot! Should you focus on the paw, the nose, or somewhere in the middle of everything?

While in this particular shot, you could get away with aiming somewhere in the middle, a general rule of thumb when photographing wildlife is to focus on the eye.

If your depth of field is narrow enough that part of the animal is actually out of focus, the eye will be the most important part to get in focus. It creates the connection needed with the viewer.

The above photo is a great example of focus priorities. On first impression of this scene, one would think that it’s absolutely critical to have all parts of the butterfly in focus, from antennae to wing tips. However, in order to blur out the background, a narrow depth of field was chosen, which did end up blurring part of the butterfly. By focusing on the eyes, it’s almost entirely missed that part of the butterfly’s wings are rather blurred. By focusing on the eyes, the rest of the animal becomes less critical for sharp focus.

In summary, focus is critical, as no matter how fancy a computer program you have, you can’t fix improper focus, or sharpen a completely blurred photo. There are several key things to remember when dealing with focus in your photography:

1. Blur can be good in a photo, as long as your subject is in focus.

2. Correct blurring of the background can properly isolate the subject from a distracting background.

3. In landscape photography, blur can showcase depth in a photo.

4. When the entire landscape is of interest, a maximum depth of field will result in sharply focused features.

5. When photographing wildlife, always focus on the eyes of the animal… even if this means part of the animal will be out of focus.