Rainy Days, Macro, and Depth of Field

1/160, f2.8

I often talk about how when the weather is bad that it is the best time to go out and make some photos.  Well, yesterday about 8" of rain fell here in Homestead, FL.  That is not the time of weather to go out and make photographs.  I sat around bored out of my head so I decided that I wouldn't let the rain get me down.  One of my favorite artistic controls given to us through photography is depth of field.  This is controlled by the aperture (or f-stop) and the distance between the camera and the subject.  The closer you get the more exaggerated the "blur".  I did a post some time ago about depth of field and you can find that HERE and HERE.

1/160, f8

I figured it was time to talk about depth of field again and given the weather it was time to do some macro work.  I have a three year old in the house so there is always a large amount of crayons floating around.  My wife located a new box just for me!!!!  They make great subjects if you haven't given it a try yet.

Remember, the larger the opening in the lens (small aperture number) the shallower the depth of field.  Each image you see was shot with a shutter speed of 1/160 of a second.  The only thing that changed was the aperture.  Even the focus point remained the same (the brown crayon).  The second set of photos it was the blue crayon that I focused on with only the aperture changing.

1/160, f16

This truly is one of the greatest creative tools that we photographs have in our arsenal and for some folks it is one of the hardest to understand.  I hope that these photographs will help you understand a bit more. I mentioned it earlier but the closer you are to a subject the more exaggerated the depth of field (or bokeh).  Remember, pixels are free so practice and practice often.

I hope you have enjoyed this and as always if you have any questions give me a call or shoot me an e-mail.

1/160, f2.8

1/160, f8

1/160, f16