- This topic has 9 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
James Staddon talked about depth of field and having something out of focus in the foreground, so what about this? Be very skeptical, please!
Attachments:
I think the idea is very well executed here. Your foreground subject is not so blurred so as to be just a blob, say, the continuity is still present. However, I find that with these particular subjects, my eye instantly goes to the closer goat, which is defocused. Your foreground subject is so strong that perhaps a bush or a rock might have suited that technique better. My gut reaction. Your shot is excellent – simple, composed, light in the animal’s eyes. Maybe going a little wider on your closer goat and defocusing the further might have worked just as well for the occasion, but very nicely done nonetheless. I’m eager to hear other people on this.
I agree with Nasa, the blurred goat in the foreground does tend to be rather distracting. Still, on the other hand, I rather like it. It is certainly an interesting composition that you don’t often see! But, as you are ‘shooting’ with a camera with a very small sensor, the amount of ‘defocusing’ that you can achieve is rather small. The smaller the sensor, the larger the DOF (Depth-Of-Field) will be. About the only way to overcome this is to zoom as much as possible, and position the subject as far away as possible from the background/foreground.
As an example here, you can see that the background is quite ‘out-of-focus’. To take this shot, I zoomed in as far as my lens would let me, and I didn’t set the puppy right in front of the trees, I had the puppy posed about 30 feet away in front of the trees. If I could take this shot again, I would have put even more distance between the trees and the puppy thereby blurring the trees even more.
@ buddingphotographer nice shot you linked there, maybe open up your aperture even a bit more to round out your bokeh (vs faceted) I do love, however how crystal sharp you got the dog! well done 🙂
Yes, the reason I was stopped down to f/8 was for sharpness’s sake, at that focal length the DOF was quite small. If you look carefully, you can see that the puppy’s nose isn’t really in focus.
But thanks for the advice, I hadn’t thought about the round bokeh as being related to how far you’re stopped down, but I guess it makes sense! I’ll have to remember that!
Good to see everyone learning new stuff! That’s what this is all about.
Back to the goat question from Sarah. Eyes draw attention! While the foreground goat perfectly illustrates the concept I was talking about with creating depth, it actually feels like what should be the most prominent part of the picture is out of focus. It gives me the over-all impression of the picture being “mis-focused”.
This would be an excellent opportunity to do the exact inverse! A tack-sharp, so-close-I-feel-like-petting-it subject in the front with the less intimate, thus less important, subject in the background. It would still create depth because the two subjects belong together, but you might say the priorities are straight.
But then keep this in mind. What if the foreground goat had it’s head turned toward the background goat? What would you do then? Focus on the eyes of the background goat! Suddenly, the background goat becomes more important than the foreground goat because eyes draw attention. The viewer would automatically follow the gaze of the out-of-focus foreground goat straight to the eyes of the now-main subject, again drawing connection between foreground and background which creates the illusion of depth.
So, that’s what I would suggest. By the way, where did you take that shot? Looks like some rugged wilderness out in the middle of nowhere . . .
By the way, where did you take that shot? Looks like some rugged wilderness out in the middle of nowhere . . .
That’s exactly what I wondered. It looks for all the world like it was taken on the hill overlooking our house in Mongolia!
Sorry, for the delay. 🙁
It was meant to look like “some rugged wilderness out in the middle of nowhere”. Actually the picture was taken at the zoo. 🙂
- This reply was modified 55 years, 3 months ago by .
Wow, I never would have guessed! Good job! Some of the nicest zoo shots are where you can’t tell that the subject is in one!
The attached pictures are my attempt to illustrate that fact:
As you can see in the first picture, the elephant is obviously in a zoo. The second and third pictures are of the same elephant, can you tell that he’s in a zoo?
EDIT: The pictures won’t stay ordered the way I had them, but I think you can tell the difference!
Attachments:
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.