Mon Jardin

My garden for those qui ne parle pas francais couramment. ;)

Thursday was the first day in a while where I was able to sleep in.

And so, of course, I woke up at eight in the morning. Feeling completely rested, I got up, bemoaning my inability to be a good teenager. Which I guess is a good thing seeing how I have less than a year left to be a teen. O.O

Okay, moving on....Getting up at that ridiculous hour of the morning has its perks. As I was walking to the kitchen, I glanced outside. The early morning light was gracing the back of our yard-- fresh, bright light highlighted the blanket of green.

I didn't do much editing on any of the pictures. I liked the way they turned out, straight out of the camera. There was natural contrast in the early morning light.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm becoming a little over the shallow depth of field! Before getting my SLR, all I wanted in life was a shallow depth of field, and a blurry background. Now, however, the shallow depth of field seems too shallow at times and it's difficult to get my entire subject in focus. I've begun to experiment with a wider depth of field.

How do you determine depth of field??

1. The main way to manipulate depth of field is your aperture. Low # (say f/2) equals shallow depth of field. The larger the number, the larger portion of your photo that is in focus. The benefit of having a low number is that it allows more light into your camera-- which allows you to have a decent shutter speed. If you up the aperture to a large number, you either need an increased ISO or a longer shutter speed.

2. Focal length! Basically, the larger the number, the easier it is to get a shallow depth of field. For me, if I zoom in to like 55 mm on my lens, my background is really blurry. If I stay at 13 mm, the background is barely blurry.

That's the basics! I could go a lot more in depth, but I want it to be understandable to those who don't really know much about photography. I know when I was first starting out, technical terms often confused the meaning of an otherwise helpful article.

The picture below was my favorite of the bunch. I'm trying to take pictures that are interesting without using shallow depth of field as almost a crutch. The picture below was shot at f/5.6 at 55 mm. Because I wasn't realllyyy close to my subject, I had a slightly larger depth of field.

Sorry if any of this is confusing! I've never tried to explain photography tips/techniques-- something I'm going to start to do.