Isolate Your Subject

Sunday I went over to the coast and had some lunch and a great time with friends. Afterwards I went to one of my favorite spots north of Fort Bragg. I spent several hours photographing a wide variety of subjects which I'll cover over the next few days with a short lesson in each one. The first lesson is on isolating your subject. One of the great things about using a telephoto lens is how they can be used to isolate your subject. Using a telephoto lens you can make the background out of focus it can really make your main subject pop and stand out in the image. The key is in getting close as possible to your subject and making sure that your subject is higher in relation to the objects around it. In both of the images below I looked for subjects that were raised up above the surrounding foliage with no distracting elements around them. I used a wide F stop the background would go out of focus in the image. I Usually F 8.0 or wider will work just fine so long as your subject is close to you and the background is farther away. I had some luck with the sparrow. When I first spotted the sparrow it was on a tall plant much further back. Then it flew towards me and landed on a sprig of plant that was even closer! The second image of the thistle was a gift. When I was walking up a trail from the rocks down by the ocean the bright color of the thistle caught my eye. First I got as close to the flower as I possible could focus. Then I maneuvered my camera so that the sloping hillside behind it made a beautiful green back drop behind the flower. Following that I checked to see that I was in AV mode and that my F stop was at F 8.0. I chose F 8.0 because I needed some depth of field to keep the flower full in focus but I wanted the background to blur out as much as possible. So grab a telephoto lens and head out there and have some fun. God's love and blessings to all, chris Both images were created with a Canon 7D and a Tamron 150-600mm lens at 552mm. ISO 400, AV mode F 8.0 at 1/125th of a sec and 1/400ths of a sec. Both were on a Manfrotto 055 XPROB tripod with a Bogen 3055 ballhead.