Looked out my dining room window the other morning and saw this mallard standing on one foot on my fence.  I wasn't sure why she was standing so funny until I got a closer look through my telephoto lens.  Her left foot was obviously wounded, the web being torn almost all the way up.  She eventually flew off to hobble around somewhere else, leaving me to ponder what got her in this predicament.  Was it lost fishing line?  A dog?  A mink?  Or...was it that whole breeding season thing?

[Canon 60D, 285mm, ISO 2500, f11, 1/400]

Dunes Depth of Field

Well, I accomplished my assignment while managing to be no help at all to the person stuck in the sand. ;) This red sand is going to kill my computer memory, I can't take enough photos of sand dunes or the designs in the sand. Depth of field is definitely a technique I need to try to use more. :D

More DOF

This is the example Craig was referring to I think, where the gun is in focus and the shooter and targets are not...still tells a story, but the DOF directs what the viewer is looking at. Pretty cool, huh. This is a good example of a portrait with a blurred background. Makes you pay more attention to the actual subject. We might not have been able to see the casing being ejected from the chamber if the whole image was in focus.

Good grief. More DOF. The angle it is shot from, plus the DOF makes this trapshoot pic more interesting.

Again, DOF lets you choose what you want to be the focal point or the subject of your image.

I only put these last 3 in for Craig...our gun lover from way back.

This last one shows how blurring the background makes for a cleaner portrait.

All of these images were shot with my 70-200mm 2.8 but am not sure of the focal length on them. I am pretty sure I shot wide open at f 2.8.

Depth of Field

Ok. I'm going to grab the bull by the horns and give us a new assignment.
It is my favorite aspect of photography besides light.
I think being able to control your depth of field separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the artist from a point and shooter.
Depth of field is created with the aperture on your lens. If you are lucky to own a lens that is a 1.4 or even up to a 2.8, it is pretty easy to create an image with a shallow depth of field.
Our aperture setting does 2 things. 1) It lets in more light (1.4 creates a larger hole in the aperture like the size of a quarter and lets in more light, opposed to, say f22 which creates a much smaller hole like the size of a pencil tip and lets in less light) and 2) creates DOF. The larger the aperture (f1.4), the narrower the area of focus the lens creates...it can be less than an inch; and the smaller the aperture (f22), the broader the area of focus, such as from the tree branch right in front of you to the mountains and infinity.
Being able to control your depth of field is how you are able to create images that "grab" the viewer. It is the photographers tool for directing the viewer to what you want them to see.
Once you get the hang if it, you never want to shoot without knowing what your fstop setting is. Initially I thought it was a phase I was going thru, but I have found it to be a way of life!

You can see here I tried a couple different things...Caitlin with her husband and baby... I took the second image first, and I liked that Charlotte was looking at her mom...but I didn't really care for Caitlin being out of focus in the front...so I moved them closer together to get a more "intimate" image, and by having the focus on Caitlin instead of her husband, the image tells a stronger story. Notice that they are about 6 feet apart, and I was able to select who I wanted in focus. Had I closed down the fstop( to a higher number), I could have had all 3 of them in focus.

Here you can see I was trying to decide which way I liked the image better. Is the photo about the medal? or about the girl? By changing the area of focus with a narrow DOF, I get to pick which I want to empasize. The area of focus is very narrow...you can follow her hand up to her wrist and see it begin to blur pretty quickly. This was taken with the 105mm  f1.4 @60

I shot these like this to be able to use the images as a background on an album page. Not something you would use to hang on a wall, but effective to tell a story in an album with other images off to the side.

The other variable is where you stand when you are taking the photo. The setting on the camera and lens was the same in both these photos. 105mm f1.4 @60.

BUT

Where I stood when I shot the image makes the difference. The closer I am to the subject, the narrower the DOF.

In the image on the left, I was as close as I could get without laying on top of her. Notice the lashes are in focus, but the eyebrows aren't. In the image on the right, her lashes and the blanket, her hair and her mouth are in focus. Because I increased my distance from the subject, the DOF increased.

Here I used DOF to tell the story of the girl and her art...her eyes are in focus...the brushes help tell her story, but have the potential for being distracting if they were all in focus...so DOF blurred them some, and then the brushes lead you to her, instead of wrestling for attention.

So

The challenge here is to take photos of anything you want. Subject is up to you. But shoot it with different apetures and see what you come up with. And feel free to post more than once. I think we could all learn from this exercise.

Mostly

Have FUN with it!  

Midnight Cravings

I am back! Sorry for the hiatus, and I promise never to go that long without posting ever again. So the assignment was food and I love food. I knew exactly how I wanted to capture it too. I wanted to capture those cravings I often get in the middle of the night. I dare say some of my life's favorite moments are the ones in the quite of my kitchen with a cup of tea and a banana at 2:00 AM.

Canon 60D, ISO 1250, 17mm, f/4, 1/30

One chipotle meatball (made by yours truly).  The bad thing is...it rolled off the table and onto the floor and before I could catch it, it rolled out the door.  It rolled in the gutter, and into the street.  And then my poor meatball was no good to eat.

Canon 60D, ISO 1250, 24mm, f/4, 1/40

Lucky for me...I had more.

iPhone 4, ISO 80, 3.9mm, f/2.8 1/30

I know I stated before that I intended not to post photos taken with my phone but I have changed my mind.  Does that make me a flip-flopper, Paula?  Why not get better with ALL equipment.  Anyway, I was shopping and couldn't resist taking a photo of the "never-ending" apple display.  Those stock guys...clever use of mirrors!  I had never noticed that before.

Vintage Food Faces

OK, Stef...special...just for you!

These are photos I took back in the late 70s/early 80s when we lived in the Aleutian Islands.  I have said about these photos in the past that when you live in the Aleutians, you have to find ways to amuse yourself but the reality is, I would have done this with my boys no matter where we lived because it's just fun!  Where else would you get to eat a peanut butter Pringle mouse?

I may have to make some more of these just for old times' sake.