The  technique I would like to give you more insight on is depth of field. The best example I can give to display what Depth of Field is the “Portrait Mode” that is found on the newer model I Phones. The portrait picture mode on I Phones automatically does what professional photographers are trained to do.

Depth of field is a photographer’s way of focusing in on a subject while keeping the integrity of the surrounding elements in the photograph. The technical definition of Depth of Field is the “amount of your image before and beyond your focus point that will be in focus.” Depth of field is an important technique to master because it will tell you whether your subject and background can be sharply focused at the same time.

Depth of field is determined by three primary factors: First, aperture/F-Stop, which controls how wide the lens opens up which controls how much light comes into the lens. Second, lenses are very critical to depth of field because there are a wide variety of lenses. Some are manual, some are automatic, some have the capability to zoom in and out and some don’t. All these factors impact the type of photographs a photographer can take and the rate they can take them at. Third is the subject distance’s. The subject’s distance is probably one of the most important variables because while the camera can actually only focus on one tiny point in space, the depth of field determines how much of the image is in “acceptable focus” to the human eye.

In subjects such as portraits, a small depth of field is often used to blur the background and reduce distractions from the main subject of the image. Photographers who specialize in this technique are usually wedding / street photographers.

Image with a small Depth of Field