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nature photography tips and tutorials

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Should You Always Isolate Your Subject?

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
One of the things we’re commonly taught about photographing wildlife is to always isolate your subject by making the background completely out of focus (like in the photo on the right).

This helps the viewer immediately focus on the subject, but should that always be your goal?

When you choose not to isolate your subject against it’s background, you can reveal much more about your subject (such as it’s habitat, size, what it might be doing at the moment, etc).

Here are a few examples to help illustrate what I mean: [Read more…] about Should You Always Isolate Your Subject?

How to isolate your subject from the background

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Photo by Matthew Fletcher
Photo by Matthew Fletcher

Isolating your subject can create a powerful image, but have you ever found yourself wondering how to keep your subject sharp while blurring the background? There are two simple keys to achieving this effect:

  • Get close to your subject, while maximizing the distance between your subject and the background
  • Use a large aperture (smaller f-number)

The larger aperture, e.g. f/4, will create a shallow depth of field, which means your subject will be sharp, but anything closer to, or further away from the camera will appear blurry (the opposite is true for smaller apertures, e.g. f/22, where you will have a greater depth of field and more of the image in focus). [Read more…] about How to isolate your subject from the background