For exercise 2, we had to shoot a series of portraits with different depths of field. Our group decided to shoot outside on Bowen St because we thought that available light would be better than the lighting in Building 10.

First we tried to get a portrait of Alaa in front of this fern. We quickly worked out it wasn’t the best spot to experiment with depth of field as the fern was quite close to where Alaa was sitting, meaning when we wanted to use a shallower depth of field the distinction between the foreground and background wouldn’t be as clear as if the fern was further back. Having said this, you can see how the fern becomes more blurred the further away it is from the camera, as the leaves that are closer to Alaa are more in focus than those further behind her.

We decided to try a different angle and move the camera so it faced into the lane and we could experiment with the depth of field. We switched models and we set the camera to a larger aperture so we could focus on Darcey with a shallow depth of field and blur the background behind her.

 

We decided to switch models once more and immediately found that as soon as you change subject you have to change the settings on the camera as well as the set up of the shot in order to compensate. I was asked to more closer to or further away from the camera a number of times while Alaa and Darcey fiddled with the settings. Again, we used a wide aperture in order to blur out the background behind me.

 

We tried another shot with a smaller aperture and wider depth of field in order to keep both myself and the background behind me in focus. This can be seen by how although they aren’t as sharp as the foreground, the leaves in the background can be seen far more clearly than they could be in the previous shot.