Website Design Tips - Hypergurl

Sharpening the main subject and blurring backgrounds improves your photos

Depth of field is a powerful tool in telling the viewer what you consider important in the photo by sharpening the main subject while on the other hand blurring out any other distracting images surrounding it. For example in this photo below you can see the difference between the original photo and the one with the blurred background.

Here is another example where the girl in the middle is the main focus:

When most of the photo is sharp, there's lots of depth of field. When only part is sharp, the depth of field is limited. As you'll see in this demonstration below the size of the field zone is determined by three main things:

1) the aperture of the lens
2) the focal length of the lens
3) the distance you are from the subject

Experimenting with your camera lens aperture and focal length will help give you complete control over the depth-of-field in a photo.

This photo tutorial on depth of field is created by Shelton Muller of Total Image magazine

To start this photo tutorial press the go arrow.