Changing maple leaves

Changing maple leaves

I have been interested in and enjoying shallow depth-of-field photos for quite a while, however it’s something I find difficult to execute well. (Isn’t everything?) A shallow plane of focus really makes a portrait pop, and that’s a great use of a large aperture. But really, that’s easy to do.

When we look at something with our eyes we typically see most (or all) of the area before us in focus, and our brain does an amazng job of simply ignoring things that aren’t in focus. So, creative use of the shallow depth-of-field to draw or place the viewer’s eye requires a little imagination and the resulting photo lets people view a scene in a way that they otherwise might not recognize.

I think I’ve done that with this photo of leaves on a maple tree. The whole photo is leaves, but the foreground and background fall out of focus, making you feel like you’re right in the middle of the leaves. At least, that was my intent and how I saw this shot.

See the original on Flickr.