# stick your hand in front of your face and look at it.....



## bombtombadll (Apr 15, 2022)

OK, a little Photography tip...

Take your hand and put it 5 inches or so from your face. Now focus on your hand. You will notice that your hand is in focus, but if you look peripherally (to the side) you will notice that everything beyond is blurry.... This is how we see as humans. You as a photographer want to replicate human vision in your photo so it looks like human sight.

Now, when you take a picture, you want the subject to be in focus but the rest to be blurry ! Yes !!!! You heard me. Blurry is a good thing, and its one of the most powerful tricks you can use as a photographer. You want your subject in focus and all the other stuff (which is distracting) to be blurred. With a good camera, this blur effect looks very nice and is called Bokeh.

Now, you see a lot of silly people that just don't understand why blur is a good thing and they set whatever camera they have up to take everything in focus. It seems to be the right thing to do right? There are times you need everything in focus, but it's rarer than you think.

The thing to learn about is depth of field, most cameras do it, you want a shallow depth of field (low f-stop). This puts your "subject" in focus, blurring everything you don't want to see.

Here is an example: Notice the subject (top flower) is in focus. The background and lower flowers are not, intentionally. If the depth of field was high and everything was in focus, the picture would seem less real and you would not know what the subject it.

Bokeh= Pretty blurring effect.....(Photography terminology) Can you tell what the subject is? Thats the point. In many cases, when you put too many things into focus, it confuses what the subject of the photo is. With blurring, its easy to know the subject and all the things that would distract turn into a gorgeous blur... Bokeh. And when you look at a picture like this it feels more real because....this is how we see !

This is the most powerful trick for anyone learning photography. It is the ABC's of photography and all good photographers know how to use this.

Depth of Field for Beginners: The Essential Guide (digital-photography-school.com)


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