Seeing through the blurry stuff : eyes wide open

One thing that regularly comes up in the training courses and 1-2-1 sessions I run is what is the point of aperture?

Other than composition and lighting, it’s our main creative control. Why? Because it acts as a means of isolating objects from a background (or making them all sharp and not isolated). Let’s just stick with the isolating bit for now. It’s the control that blurs stuff out. If I focused on one of the pears in the examples below and an aperture of F32,  everything would be in focus – the whole scene. At F4 or “wide open” (depending on your lens) I can pick a smaller piece of the scene out and blur the rest.

Note – the wider you shoot and the further away you from something, the less obvious this blurring or isolating effect is. It is when you’re close that it has the impact.

 

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *