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nature photography tips and tutorials

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How to Win the Battle of Close-up Photography

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Pitcher Sage / Photo by Steve Berardi
Pitcher Sage / Photo by Steve Berardi
In close-up nature photography, there’s a constant battle of trying to find that perfect balance between a sharp subject and an out-of-focus background.

An out-of-focus background is essential to a good close-up photo, because it helps draw attention to your main subject.

But, it’s not always easy to get that nice background. Sometimes the background is just too close, or your subject has a lot of depth (forcing you to try a smaller aperture, which then puts more of the background in focus).

So, how do you deal with this constant battle? Well, here are a few ways: [Read more…] about How to Win the Battle of Close-up Photography

3 Things That Affect Depth of Field

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Diagram by Jared C. Benedict (used under the CC-Attr-SA license)
Diagram by Jared C. Benedict (used under the CC-Attr-SA license)
I was planning to write about the three things that affect depth of field this week, but by pure coincidence (seriously!), I discovered this great blog post that Brian Auer wrote a few days ago:

Three Ways to Control Depth of Field

I’d highly recommend checking it out. Brian did a nice job of explaining the three things that affect depth of field (aperture, camera to subject distance, and focal length), including some sample images too.

There’s a few things I’d like to add though: [Read more…] about 3 Things That Affect Depth of Field

Why you should memorize the f-number series

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Diagram by Chris Buckley / Used under the GFDL
Diagram by Chris Buckley / Used under the GFDL
In photography there’s something known as the standard f-number series. It’s a geometric sequence of f-numbers that goes like this:

f/1 1.4 2 2.8 4 5.6 8 11 16 22 32

At first this may look like a random series of numbers, but there’s actually a method to this madness, and memorizing this series can help you make quick adjustments to exposure when switching between f-numbers. [Read more…] about Why you should memorize the f-number series