Depth of Field

Find two examples of photographs, which make use of maximum depth of field, and two examples, which have very shallow depth of field.
Describe how the photographer’s selective use of aperture affects the subject in each of the photographs you have chosen.



Image by enggul

The photographer in this image obtained this shot by widening the aperture on their camera thus creating a shallow depth of field. They widen the aperture by bringing down the F-stop number to something like f/2 or f/2.8 for example.

Image by Dustin Diaz

This photographer also used a shallow depth of field. He obtained this by widening or turning down the aperture on his camera to a small F-stop.

Image by Antti Lehtinen

The photographer in this example, clearly wanted to have everything in this photo in perfect focus. By having everything in focus all at once, he closed his aperture to a very small opening. By that, I mean that he turned his F-stop up to something like f/22. If he would have only had his aperture on f/4, then you would only be able to see that first hay stack on the right side. Bigger apertures are vital for images with GDF or Great Depth of Field.

Image taken by Ansel Adams

This is another example which was taken by the famous Ansel Adams. He had to manually increase his aperture to something small enough where he could capture the fine detail leading all the way up to the church and back. This photographer would not have been able to create this using a wide aperture or small F-stop number. These types of photos that use GDF or Great Depth of Field can only be obtained by small apertures and large F-stop numbers.

Silhouettes

Find two images that have been shot into the light or included the light source. Explain how the photographer may have gone about taking a light meter reading for these photograph.


Darren Rowse

The photographer analyzed the lighting in this setting and came to the conclusions that the sun (the main light source) is extremely bright and is only emitting light onto one side of the ship. If the photographer wanted to capture the side shown, he would have had to use a large flash in order to cast light onto the subject. The photographer most likely used a light meter to judge how bright the light source is and what he should do in order to capture the genera shape of the ship while also taking in the color of the ocean and sky.



Mahd Zaki

The photographer here most likely used a light meter in order to calculate what he would need for a silhouette. Considering that there is light bouncing off of the water, the subject would naturally be emitted by the radiating sun light. In order to truly capture a silhouette n the subject, the photographer used a light meter in order to calculate how much he should tune his camera setting to only capture the brightest lights from the sunset. If you look in the distance on the right, the little island is also in a silhouette form. This proves that the subject and the island both have natural light emitted on them and that the photographer purposely changed his camera settings to capture the above image.

Light Sources

Activity 2


Blog Entry
Find an example of a photograph where the subject has been lit by a single light source and an example where more than one light has been used.
Describe in each the quality and position of the brightest or main light and the effect this has on the subject. In the second example describe the quality and effect the additional light has.






odlesnova@iStockphoto.com




This subject is being lit b only one light source. The light has an effect of only highlighting the front of the subject, while the rest of the image is black due to low light.












This photo was taken in an outdoor setting. Because of that, they had the sun as the main light source. They also used an artificial light as an additional light to brighten up their faces and erase the shadows on the right side of the image.




Both images have great quality to their lighting and really show the type of lighting style they were trying to achieve.

Hard Light

- Jim Harmer




This photo by Jim Harmer uses a tool called 'hard light' which focuses larger amounts of light on specific areas while leaving other areas less exposed and darker.

This particular photo has:



a soft texture because the light gives off the feeling of relaxation and that creates an easy image to look at.
The light creates a vast amount of detail when looking at the faces and hair, while the other less-exposed parts contain not as much detail.
The overall mood of the photo is romantic and peaceful. The lighting only highlights the faces of the couple which clearly shows that they are focused on one-another. Using hard light is a good way to highlight certain parts and truly show what you want, while leaving the rest of the image simply for 'background' usage and to complement on the beauty.