Depth of Field

We went to the pond the other day so Brooke and Ainsley could feed the ducks. While they were doing that, I snapped a few shots of Braxton sitting in the stroller. I was using my 85mm f/1.8 lens wide open at f/1.8. When you are wanting a very shallow depth of field so that only your subject will be in focus, the bigger the aperture (smaller number) you can get, the shallower your depth of field will be. I personally love this look and that is why I shoot "wide open" 90% of the time.

You will see that in this image, only Braxton's eyes are tack sharp and everything else begins to fall away very nice to give that great bokeh.

Most lenses that come as "kit" lenses with your DSLR do not have fixed apertures and usually don't have a bigger aperture than f/3.5. For this reason, I only have "pro" lenses with fixed apertures (the aperture does not get smaller as you zoom in) no smaller than f/2.8. My primes (50mm & 85mm) are f/1.4 and f/1.8 respectively.

Try shooting wide open as often as possible and put some space between your subject and the background for the shallowest depth of field.