Try This at Home

Chapter One: Prerequisite—Photo 101

Change the Story with Focus

Gear: A camera, tripod or monopod and any medium lens with a wide aperture of at least f/2.8. Focal lengths between 35mm and 85mm would be good to work with.¹ Optional gear: ND filters, as necessary. 

Location: A scene that is either extremely crowded with people or visually crowded with textures and/or objects. Think of a busy public market or a long aisle between two bookshelves in a library.

Subject: You need a definitive subject that won’t change for this exercise. The easiest thing would be to use a friend that you bring along.

Goal: Your assignment is to shamelessly manipulate one scene and end up with two distinctly different photographs. You’ll accomplish this by shooting at both the widest and smallest apertures on your lens. With only a change in DoF, the photographs you create will tell two different stories.

The Shoot

1. Get your kit together: Select your fastest lens (the one with the widest-possible aperture). A great lens would be a 50mm ƒ/1.4, since it allows you to explore a gigantic difference in DoF. Don’t worry—even a lens that only goes to ƒ/4.0 will work for this one. It’s helpful to use a tripod to keep your camera in the same position throughout the exercise, since your goal is to compose and focus a shot, then shoot again, changing nothing except the aperture value.
2. Location: Choose a busy place with as much visual texture as possible. Think about locations such as public markets or junkyards. Pick a subject, or bring a friend to pose for you.
3. Composition: Frame up a shot that contains a lot of visual texture in the foreground and background. You want plenty of stuff to go in and out of focus, as compared to your subject. Make sure you take the time to pay attention to your location. Try to fix it in your mind so you’ll be able to compare your memory to the photos.
4. Focus: Place your subject in the scene and focus right on his or her face. Accuracy counts!
5. Shallow DoF Settings: Put your camera in Manual or Aperture Priority mode. Start with your aperture all the way to its widest setting (probably between ƒ/1.2 and ƒ/4). Next, manually adjust the shutter speed so that your in-camera meter sits at the “normal” mark on the meter scale.(Aperture Priority will do this for you, but it’s good experience not to rely on it). Take a short series of photos.
6. Deep DoF Settings: Without altering the focus or framing, set the aperture to its smallest value (probably between ƒ/16 and ƒ/32). Again, adjust the shutter speed to get a normal exposure and take another short series of photos. If necessary, increase your ISO so that your subject won’t blur as a result of using a super-slow shutter speed.

Evaluating the Results

Once you’re safely back inside your darkened digital cave, open your editing software and import your images. We use Lightroom to handle our files, but Photoshop, Aperture, Capture One—or any other program—will work just fine. Select a favorite image from each aperture set, and then put them side-by-side so you can really compare them. Lightroom’s “Compare” tool is helpful for this function. Zoom into 100 percent—also known as Real Pixel View—and then back to the “Fit on Screen” size.

Try to get a feeling for the aesthetic differences between the images and start making the connection between the settings and the results.

Consider these questions:

• Where does the focus begin and end in the shallow DoF image? Compare the same area in the deep DoF image.
• What’s the story difference between the two images?
• How does the change in DoF alter the relationship between your subject and the environment?
• Which image do you prefer?