Aperture (AV): Aperture is the size of the hole that lets light into the camera. By changing the aperture, you can specify how much the subject stays in focus. Shooting at a large aperture like f2.8 (the smaller the number the larger the hole) creates a narrow area of focus. Moving the aperture to f20 (the larger the number the smaller the hole) gives greater depth of field, with more of the subject and background in focus.
The first two images to the left have large apertures at f3.5, so the image has a narrow area of focus, with a holly branch in the foreground and background plants blurred.
The third image on the left has a small aperture at f22, so both the subject and background are in focus. Compared to the holly images above, this image isn’t particularly interesting as there’s too much detail and analogous colour in the photo.
The below images use a zoom lens (the camera lens is 18mm-135mm) and a large aperture to get right into the plants and help the water droplets standout.
Unit 2 research
Award winning photography
Award winning photographers use depth of field and Bokeh in some rousing ways, as shown below. Mohammad Murad was highly commended in the ‘category mammals’ at the Nature Photographer of The Year Awards 2019, for his night-time photograph of fox cubs and city lights, named ‘Colorful Night.’
Summary
This exercise has broadened my knowledge of how aperture works and the different effects you can get. To get my shots, I visited to Barnes Common where there’s an abundance of trees, shrubs and various evergreens. I concentrated on a few small areas of foliage, getting up close to particular branchlets and leaves. I really love the outdoors and wide open spaces, so the challenge for me was to focus on just one branch. I successfully achieved this with the first shot at the top of the page. I then worked through different apertures and got different results, and I was delighted with every shot. In the future, I want to focus more on composition so that I am able to combine bokeh with portraits, or people, and street photography.