Today I would like to touch on a subject that can be used to help your photographs tell a story and get the people to view and "Focus" on what you want them to see. All photos will use depth of field to so extent - either it being no depth of field (Used in Landscape Photography) to minimal depth of field (Used in portrait photography)

First what is Depth Of Field (DOF)  - Depth of field is where one plane is in focus and the focus gradually falls off in front and behind what is is focus. (See Examples Below)

Depth of field is controlled by the F-Stop of F-Number: The Higher the F-stop such as f/32 the larger the plane of focus. The Smaller f/1.4 the narrower the plane of focus will be.

Examples of Depth of Field 

Small Depth of field Examples (Using Smaller f-stops)

As you can see from the above two examples not everything is in focus - but this is good as it will give the eye something to focus on - What ever is in focus becomes the center of attention and the rest will give just add to the scene giving the photo context.

I suggest playing around with your cameras settings and if available on your camera use the aperture adjustment as this will give you the depth of field you want to use and let the camera adjust the shutter speed to what you need for the photo.

Remember it is usually safe to say the lower the number the faster the shutter speed will be as you are allowing in more light on the lower f-stops. This is particually useful when taking a portrait under low light situations and don't have a tripod to use. Have you ever taken a photo at a birthday party using just the candles and the face is in focus but the cake is out of focus. This is Depth of Field at work.

Now I would like to share a video I found on YouTube talking about Depth of field.

Sit back and enjoy the tutorial.

Technorati Tags: DIY, Photography, depth+of+Field, DOF, Aperture, Fstop, F+Stop, Focusing, Digital+Camera+Guide, Technique, Blurry

The Photography Gadget of the day is the Gorillapod by JOBY - This has to be one of the best things to just buy and keep in your photo bag. How many times have you wished you could be in the photo and didn't have your tripod with you. Well, This Gorillapod allows you to attach your camera and then set it up like a tripod or wrap it's legs around a pole, tree, bench leg, the places are endless where you can use it. The Gorllapod is compact, bendable, portable, grippable and kinda cool. 

The GorillaPod comes in three varieties: Compact, SLR, SLR+Zoom - The biggest differences are the ammound of weight that each can handle.

Compact or Original can hold a compact camera up to 9.75 ozs - Perfect of all the wonderful portable Digital cameras out there.

The SLR Version can handle a little larger load: up to 1.75 lbs - This will be for most of the regular slr camera and larger digital cameras

and The SLR Pro can handle the largest of the loads: up to 6.6 lbs - This will handle even different tripod heads as well and will handle the SLR with zoom lens.

I found that Amazon has some good choices of this product. 

Technorati Tags: gorillapod, tripod, digitalcamera, Digital+Camera, SLR, fuzzy, out+of+focus, Group

Todays Technique is more of a “Secret Tip” as most people taking a photo tries to put too much into the frame instead of filling the frame with the subject. It is far better to take a few steps closer if you can or use your Optical Zoom to “Tighten Up” on the main subject. You really want to close in on the subjects face. People viewing the photo will get lost in the image and not know what to look at. So if you put more of the subject you want to show or take a photo of into the frame the better you “Tell your Story”.

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Andrzej Dragan - The portraits that he produces are enticing and a slightly surreal. All of his photos capture "normal" people in their true light. He says he give the people he captures the look as how he felt he saw them. The images are dark, dirty, and have a "I have really see alot".  I find this type of photo quite interesting and will be trying to do this to a couple of my portraits that I have photographed.  I invite anyone that has created one of these type of portraits to add a link to your blog or site showing your work. I would love to see your before and after and what you did to accomplish this.

Here it the link to Andrzej Dragan Site.

And here are some of the people trying to learn to use his effect.

Flicker Group on Dragan

Pbase Group with Photoshop Action to perform this.

AtnAction Site Download

Tags: Photo, Art, Dragan, Action, Photoshop