Friday Photography Tips #7 - Isolate Your Subject
Getting Close - Being centimetres makes the icing on one cake the main focus
In last week's photography tip I discussed how to create a shallow depth of field by controlling the focal length or aperture of your lens. But there are other ways to isolate someone or something, to give them greater focus in your photograph.
1. Negative Space
Compose your image where the background is neutral or empty. This can be achieved by using a background with a single colour, a background that has less light hitting it, or a combination of the two. The image above has been created using lights pointed at the subject but away from the background (which is black paper).
The image below is from an overcast day, the background is almost entirely black due to the shade created by large trees behind the subject.
2. Create Distance to the Background
There will be times when the situation means you cannot reduce the depth of field in your image. In this case increase the physical distance between your subject and the background, the further the better.
3. Get Close to the Subject
Another way of reducing the depth of field (but without fiddling with the camera controls) is to get as close to the subject as you can while still achieving focus. As with the cake image at the top of the post, the foreground and background will blur due to the shallow depth of field.
This technique does have a drawback, which is particularly prevalent when using wide-angle lenses (such as the main lens on your smartphone). Lenses exaggerate the size of objects closest to them and minimise objects in the distance. In portraits this can lead to facial features such as chin, nose, cheeks or forehead appearing much larger and not exactly flattering your subject. In the example below, the top of Finn's head is tilted backwards making it appear smaller than his physically closer and now fuller cheeks and nose.
When it comes to babies, this facial distortion doesn't bother people too much as their children's features are seen as endearing and change so quickly. But for non-infants and especially those that are self-conscious of how they look, I think it is important to consider how they look in a composition.
I hope you found this week's tip useful. As always please share with those you think might find it useful and get in touch if you have any questions or comments.
Happy Friday,
Tom
