A Look Back at: January 10th, 2007

We’re on a roll, today marks a whole week of Look Backs, only fifty one more to go.

Shouldn't you be on a Leash?

On January 7th, 2007 we had unseasonably warm weather so I decided to spend it at the local park. Turned a corner and saw this dog looking at me up the path. Ahhh, shouldn’t you be on a leash?

Two hikers (his owner?) were a ways behind, surely too far back to do anything if the dog decided to go on a rampage against photographers. But, he was well behaved, I like dogs, let him sniff my hand as we crossed paths and continued on my way.

This shot uses a few compositional rules to focus attention on the subject, which is the dog. We have the dog in focus while the rest of the scene is blurry, the subject is also on a thirds intersection. He is also pretty much the brightest object in the scene.

First for focus, use a large aperture. Remember that apertures are fractions and the smaller the number, the larger the aperture, the more light that exposes your sensor or film, and the shallower the depth of field is. Depth of field (DOF) is the distance from near to far where items that fall in that range are in acceptable focus. I admit that here I cheated a bit and used Alienskin Bokeh to increase the background separation.

The Rule of Thirds is a popular one, and is never really a rule but more a guideline. Take the image and make a tic-tac-toe board on it with equally spaced lines proportionate to the height and width. Place your subject on one of those lines or intersections.

Lastly, contrasts draw our attention to a subject. Make sure your subject stands out against not only backgrounds that compete for brightness but for complexity as well.

Two things I can see could make a better final product: See where the dog’s ears are placed where the path and grass meet? Had I shot a little higher I might have tried to keep the subject inside of the concrete path. I could have also moved a step to the right and placed the blurry hiker on the opposite third intersection and help with a balancing effect. Oh well.

-J

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When I first saw the Bokeh demo I figured it would quickly leave our minds as quickly as it appeared. I also thought – Hmmmm great, one less thing pro body shooters have over the good old point and shooters. So I grumbled a bit but the video stuck in the back of my mind.

What is bokeh (as a term, not the program)? Simply put, Bokeh is the look of your out of focus areas of your image. Of course it is much more, but for the purposes of this review, that’s the simplest explanation.

'Hot Air' - After Bokeh

I’m lucky to have almost every lens I could want at this moment in time (minus some very long or very specialized and thus very expensive glass) I have been thinking about picking up a tilt shift. Well over $1k US for the lens I want. I don’t mind an expensive glass purchase for something I would use regularily – the 400mm 2.8 L IS and the Tilt Shift lens would rarely see any real action to justify the purchase.

I watched the video again – hmmm, this could be something very interesting. Of course the video made it seem like magic, I patiently waited for the demo release and today there it was. Alienskin Bokeh demo 1.00. I downloaded it, installed it, loaded up a recent photo that would look good with a little more background separation.. The Alienskin window just sat there, my image inside with a complete blur over the entire field. I fumbled around with some sliders and buttons. Nothing. Oh man, don’t tell me I have to mask off everything before entering the program. Rats.. I guess nothing will ever save me from masking and selections. Yuck.

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