Playing with Light's Depth Of Field (DOF).

I've been trying to get back to basic photographic techniques, for myself and to teach the kids. So a few weeks ago, while I was at the preserve, I decided to play with the DOF of light. A lot of photographers use the lens DOF, but ignore light DOF. I've read of various techniques for exploiting it. The way I learned (by accident of course) in the old film SLR days was to use the flash and adjust the cameras aperture to be extremely narrow (usually f18-f22 range). The subject should be relatively close. The background, to be darkened or blacked out, should be at least slightly darker than the subject and should have at least some separation.  The shorter the distance to the background, the darker(relatively) it needs to be. The on camera flash works fine, you just need to make sure the flash is aimed at the subject you are focusing on.

By experimenting with the aperture and flash intensity, the DOF of light can create some great mood shots, virtual 3d shots and blackened out backgrounds.

All of the shots, in this post, were taken this past weekend, in the afternoon, while it was light out. If you downloaded some of the black background shots and juiced the colors, you would actually see the background objects (or remnants of them) appear.

This is a very fun and easy technique for beginners to make cool looking photos. I was going to get more detailed on the explanation, but figured I was already making an easy process sound more confusing than it needed to.  If anyone wants more information, they can email me.

I actually took two more pictures today.  The shots aren't very good but were taken in succession one at f5 no flash and one at f22 with flash.  They were taken at noon and it was slightly overcast.  The above shots were taken in slightly less light.  I think the below shots show the above point quite well.