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Project 52 - Week 5:Depth Of Field

Well, after the madness that was yesterday weather wise, Nelson has woken up to some sunshine, shes still looking pretty rough around the edges in some parts, and for some, there have been some life changing events.

You have to take your hat off to Mother Nature, truly something to behold when angry. The force and destruction of her wraith is something to be respected and feared.

So yet again I find myself writing another blog on the day it is due. At least this time though I already have the piece prepared which I'm using. (Score one for me!)

Depth of field is basically the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects giving a focused image. Different lenses have differing effects and depending on your focal range, the effect can be quite dramatic. From a Photo Artistry perspective Depth of field is also important, the difference is, it can and often is manipulated via the use of Photoshop.

Take this image of Bran for example. I took this image of this old boy late last year. He was the focus of the image, therefore he was the most in focus item in that image, and everything behind him fell away into a blur.

I picked this image for this reason. My background is blurred already, and by putting the two together you can replicate the effects of DOF.

However, the eye is not easily fooled. Have you ever looked at an image and thought... there is something not quite right here, you cant quite reconcile yourself with what is wrong?.... That's because it is harder to fool the eye than you might think. For a lot of Photo Artists a lot of time goes into blending and blurring and generally trying to get the image to look appealing to the eye. (Notice I didn't say real?) It has to make sense to the brain and the eye. Or , often you will find the complete opposite approach... the choice is entirely up to the artist.

There is also a tool in Photoshop called focus points that can be used to assist with this, I personally prefer to not use that and do it all by hand. You can see above the results. Granted, I still have a lot of learning to do, but you get the idea.

And that's all from me folks, I could go into the ins and outs of exactly how I created this but for most I think that would just be plain boring. I'm looking forward to comparing this image with other works I create over the next 6 months to see how far Ive progressed.

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