Light always plays a part to a greater or lesser degree in any photograph. Sometimes, as was the case the morning of June 30 when I captured the image in this post, light becomes a compositional element in the photograph.

But light can be a fickle subject. She is prone to fool your lightmeter, claiming for herself center stage, causing your camera to underexpose your main subject.

Light also can be elusive. While she is eager to show herself in all her glory, she will do so for but a moment. The photographer must act quickly to capture her on film before she slips away to hide in the full glare of the sun.

A photographer will be well served to learn the secrets of natural light.

One may surmise by looking at my Photo Gallery that I pay close attention to depth of field when taking photographs. Depth of field is the technical phenomenon that causes some parts of a photograph to be in focus and some to be out of focus. Depth of field traditionally has been caused by the relationship of the lens aperture (the size of the hole that lets light into the camera) and the size of the film. The larger the piece of film, the shorter the depth of field (meaning more of the image will be out of focus). That is why large format view cameras tend to produce images with a short depth of field at many aperture settings. As the film one uses gets smaller in size more of the image is in focus. Hence, 35mm cameras allow for a more in focus image than medium and large format cameras.

I took the photograph above, Country Store, with a 35mm film camera. I was able to set the film camera so that my subject, the woman in the back room, is in focus, and everything else in the foreground is out of focus. In my view, this short depth of field which empasizes certain elements of the image makes a much more interesting photograph than if everything was in focus. Country Store is featured in the Travel Portraits gallery at www.wmgphoto.com

To learn about the challenge of creating a short depth of field using a digital camera, click here ——>

In the Renaissance Acrobat Image shown here (which I shot at the 2007 Maryland Renaissance Festival), it appears that the depth of field created by the camera put the subject in focus and the background out of focus. Such is not the case, however. The problem is that I shot this photograph with a digital 35mm camera, and digital 35mm cameras (with only a few exceptions) have image sensors (i.e. the “film” of the digital world) that are smaller than a regular 35mm piece of film. Consequently, try as I might, I cannot set this camera to give me a short depth of field.

In this photograph straight out of the camera both the foreground and the background were in focus, and the background was so busy that it overwhelmed the subject. In that form, this was not a very interesting photograph. Fortunately, I was able to isolate the foreground and apply a photoshop filter to the background to reproduce the guassian blur that would have occured had I been able to set the camera to give me a short depth of field.

This post-production digital manipulation was a tedious process, and I much prefer to set up the camera to give me the depth of field I desire.