From the course: Learning to Critique Photos

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Understanding how depth of field affects an image

Understanding how depth of field affects an image

From the course: Learning to Critique Photos

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Understanding how depth of field affects an image

- Depth of field. Whether to choose selective focus or great depth of field, this is a powerful decision we make as photographers that has a profound effect on the success of our images, how much of our photo to keep in focus. In this image here in Fes I opted for a lot of depth of field because I wanted everything to be in focus, from the foreground to the background. I wanted the viewer to see what I saw, the incredible architecture here in Fes, Morocco, and because everything is sharp you have time and room to sort of look through and discover little details within the photograph. Conversely, this is the opposite. This is selective focus. Here I'm shooting close to wide open and because of it I've chosen on what to focus, and that is this woman here. I thought that she was beautiful, for one. I thought that she was very expressive, so I decided to make her the main focal point of the picture. One way to do that is to use selective focus, a very wide aperture, I'm close to wide…

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