Selective Depth of Field

Yes, I should be doing homework… but I am not, well kind of but not really! My assignment in my photography class this week is selective depth of field. This is where one thing in the photograph is in focus and sharp and the rest of the photo starts to blur and fade out. Of course this looks really cool in wedding and engagement pictures and I have seen many examples of it, but wasn’t quite sure how to achieve it. I also found out this is how my favorite bloggers (and professionals shooting for magazines and ads) make their food look so good when they post a recipe with pictures! So I thought I would play around with it. My class is a B&W film class, so I don’t get the instant gratification of knowing if I have been able to pull off this skill, I have to wait and go through the developing process and waste film. So these are just stupid things that I was playing around with at home with my digital camera, that I thought I would share! I don’t have this down at all but I am excited to use it. The photography blogs I have been stalking lately, use this technique quite a bit!

Another angle.

Here are some from my mom’s shoot the other weekend, where I achieved selective depth of field. I was actually going for this look but didn’t know what it was called or how to really do it, so they didn’t work how I wanted, hence the reason I didn’t include them in my last post. They do work for this type of shot though so I thought I would include them here! (They are straight from the camera w/o any photoshop touches!)

This is the same shot as above (obviously) but the background is in focus and my lovely mother is not… not what I was meaning to do, but it would work better for some other shots.

Here is another example (bad one) of the background in focus.

That is all for now! I am going to the Llama festival this weekend, so I can practice some more things and I need to work on my assignment for next week so more posts to come!!! Thanks for stopping by and stay classy!