Aperture – Aperture is how wide the hole in the back of the lens is, and it controls how much light is let in. It is measured in f-stops and the lower the number, the more light is let in.
Depth of Field – DOF is what’s in focus in front of or behind the main subject of the photo. Lower aperture (f2.8-f4) gives a shallow DOF (minimal focus) , higher aperture (f16-f22) gives a greater DOF (broader focus).
Focal Length – The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light; it is the inverse of the system’s optical power. A positive focal length indicates that a system converges light, while a negative focal length indicates that the system diverges light.
Canon Camera Simulator
Shutter Speed – 1/10 Aperture – f6.7 ISO – 100
The slower shutter speed shows the propellers fast movement, the mid aperture blurs the background and keeps the main subject in greater focus, the lower ISO lowers the photos exposure.
Shutter Speed – 1/60 Aperture – f4 ISO – 400
The slower shutter speed shows the propellers movement, the low-mid aperture blurs the background and keeps the foreground in greater focus, the slightly higher ISO makes the photos brighter.
Uta Barth
Uta Barth employs depth of field and focus in her work by using a wide aperture and capture nothing of her photos in focus. Her work is about vision and perception and to make people really think about what their looking at, by ensuring nothing is in focus.
This photo (Fields #23) is part of a series called ‘Fields’ , a sequel to the series ‘Ground’ , both of which portraying blurred and empty foregrounds. These works also portray motion as the movement of the photos shows motion and movement
Aperture is how much light is let in the camera. It is in the lens, it is measured in the f/stops
depth of field iswhat’s in focus, The smaller the aperture the smaller the depth of view, the larger the aperture the greater the depth of view, depth of field is what is in focus behind and in front of the main subjects
a narrow depth of field is f1.4-f 5.6 if i want everything in my shot i want to use f 22
The primary function of Aperture is to control the amount of light which is utilised by the camera by enlarging or minimising the size of the hole in the back of the lens via F/stops ( numbers which dictate the size of the hole or commonly known as the focal length of the lens). This typically ranges from f/1.8 -f/22.
Depth of field links in directly with aperture, it is recognised by the ability to manage things in focus. Usually a larger f/stop means there will be more things in focus because there is a smaller hole in the lens ( this is called a deep depth of field as the background/focal point and foreground are both in focus) , whereas typically a smaller f/stop setting and a larger hole in the lens ties in directly with a shallow depth of field meaning only a narrow area of the photograph will be in focus( the first thing the camera takes notice off, the foreground or the main focal point). creating an image with a blurred background where only the main object is in focus.
Small aperture / Larger f/stop = Deep depth of field + smaller focal length ( smaller hole) > More things in focus.
Large aperture / Smaller f/stop = Shallow depth of field = Larger focal length ( larger hole) > Less things in focus
Experimenting With Aperture
Here I am using the lowest aperture possible, which in return creates a image with a clear focal point ( the plane) and a blurred background.
The image is fully unreadable when using a high aperture without changing the shutter speed, as they work interlinked and always rely on each over to create a aesthetically pleasing image.
In order to fix this issue, I balanced out the shutter speed setting to match the aperture being high, they work in correlation to each over, when f/stop is increased, the shutter speed must slow down in order to create a clear image. Here the image has everything in focus, which represents how aperture works.
Experimenting With Aperture.
In order to achieve the effect of blurring the subject, I had to use a smaller aperture and higher f stop to be able to focus in on the background with a deep depth of field.
In order to achieve a blurred background I had to use a high aperture and low f stop setting in order for the camera to utilise a shallow depth of field , to create this portrait like affect where the background is blurred and the subject is in focus.
Photographers who utilised aperture depth of field.
Uta Barth
is a prominent contemporary photographer known for her explorations of perception and the act of seeing, particularly through her manipulation of aperture and depth of field. Her work often blurs the lines between representation and abstraction, inviting viewers to engage with the subtleties of light, focus, and space.
Barth’s photography frequently employs a shallow depth of field, which creates a sense of ambiguity and encourages viewers to question what they see. This technique can obscure details and shift attention, prompting an examination of how our perception is influenced by focus and blur. In pieces like her series “Ground,” she uses soft focus to emphasize the sensory experience of seeing, rather than merely documenting a subject.
Through her experiments with aperture, Barth highlights the temporal and spatial aspects of photography. By adjusting the settings on her camera, she plays with the viewer’s expectations and experiences, often leading to a more meditative engagement with the images.
Saul Leiter
was a pioneering American photographer known for his vibrant colour work and innovative use of depth of field. Active primarily in the mid-20th century, Leiter’s photography is characterized by a poetic approach to street scenes and urban life, blending abstraction with the everyday.
Leiter often employed a shallow depth of field, which allowed him to create a sense of intimacy and immediacy in his images. By focusing on specific details while leaving other elements blurred, he drew attention to colour, light, and form, transforming mundane scenes into evocative compositions. His unique use of colour was ground-breaking at the time, capturing the atmosphere of New York City with a painterly sensibility.
His work also often features reflections, layers, and obstructions, such as windows or rain-soaked surfaces, which further enhance the feeling of depth and complexity. Leiter’s ability to blend focus and blur creates a dreamlike quality, inviting viewers to explore both the physical and emotional landscapes of his photographs.
Ralph Eugene Meat yard
was an American photographer known for his enigmatic and often haunting imagery. Active primarily in the mid-20th century, Meatyard’s work is characterized by its exploration of themes such as identity, isolation, and the uncanny, often using masks and staged scenes to evoke a sense of mystery.
His approach to photography was deeply influenced by his background in philosophy and literature. Meatyard often created surreal, dreamlike compositions that challenge viewers’ perceptions of reality. He frequently employed shallow depth of field and unconventional framing, which contribute to the otherworldly quality of his work.
Meat yard’s use of masks in his photographs adds layers of meaning, inviting viewers to consider the nature of identity and the roles we play in society. His series often included family members and friends, blending personal narrative with broader themes of existence.
Personal Work inspired by Ralph Eugene Meat yard
I focused on capturing close-up shots of sticks, branches, and the intricate details of tree life. As I adjusted the aperture settings, I chose a wider opening to create a shallow depth of field.
This technique allowed me to keep my main subjects sharp and detailed, while the backgrounds faded into a soft blur. I loved how this made the textures of the plants and the unique shapes of the branches stand out., drawing the viewer’s eye directly to the beauty I found in those small, often overlooked elements of nature.
The blurred backgrounds created a peaceful, dreamy effect, adding a sense of calm to my shots. Making the textured details of the tree life truly stand out.
Focus points and focal length
The focal point is essentially the area of an image that draws the viewer’s attention first; it’s where I want to direct their gaze. Understanding how to choose and emphasize this point is crucial for effective composition.
Focal length, measured in millimetres, determines the lens’s angle of view and how much of the scene is captured. A shorter focal length, like 18mm, gives a wider perspective, which is great for landscapes or capturing more of a scene. Conversely, a longer focal length, such as 85mm or 200mm, allows me to zoom in on specific details, isolating subjects.
When I experiment with different focal lengths, I notice how they affect the depth of field. A longer focal length can produce a shallower depth of field, blurring the background and making my focal point stand out even more. This technique can really enhance the textures and details I want to highlight in my subjects, whether it’s the intricate patterns on a leaf or the roughness of tree bark.
Aperture is the amount of light let into the lens which is measured in F/Stops. The F/Stops allow to control how much is going in – 1.4mm F/Stops lets a lot of light in while 50mm F/Stops will make it a pinhole shape.
Depth of Field is what’s in focus, in front and behind the subject. Deep depth of focus means everything is in focus however there is a small aperture. A shallow depth of field is only one thing in focus with a large aperture. If you want more focus you need a higher F number, but if you want a less focused image use a lower F number.
Aperture– The aperture is the opening of the lens that allows light form the outside to come into the camera and onto the sensor of film. The size of this opening can be adjusted by changing the aperture setting for example a wide aperture means that the lens is more open and the back ground is unfocused however a narrow aperture means that the lens is more closed meaning that more is in focused.
Depth of field– Depth of field is what its focused in front or behind the subject. It drags the viewers attention to a chosen point. D.O.F is affected by the aperture . A very large aperture was a very small depth of field almost nothing in focus, A very small aperture has a very large depth of field which means almost everything is in focus.
low aperture the only part that is on focus is the air plane mid aperture there is focus but the main focus is still on the airplane high aperture Everything is on focus
Aperture photography
In this image we used high aperture as it can be seen everything is in focus the subject but also the background everything can be seen clearly. In this picture the aperture is at a medium level the background can still be clary seen but the subject is seen more clearly. This picture has a low aperture the camera is focused on the person at the front an the background is more out of focused I think this picture is really interesting since you can still see what’s in the background but its out of focus. This picture has a high aperture however I think it would be more interest if we used a low aperture because then the main focus would be on us and not the background. This picture was taken using a medium aperture, I think this picture is really interesting because the legs are in focus even if the background is still in still in focus. This picture was taken using a low aperture and its one of my favourite images because I think its really well taken.
Editing
I made this image black and white because I think it fits with the poses that we are doing since we are kind of hidden I don’t think a colourful editing will go as well as a darker editing. I edited this picture on adobe light room using the develop tab.
The aperture is how much light is let into the camera.
It is in the iris of the lens.
Its measured in F/stops.
Depth of field is what’s in focus in front or behind the subject.
A high F/stop is f/16 – f/22
This is a photo I took on the website with a high aperture f/16, this has made it so everything is in focus.
Here is a photo of me with a low shutter speed, this makes it so me the main subject is the primary focus of the image and the background is blurred to make it so I pop/stand out.
Here is a photo i took where the shutter speed is super low and is not able to capture the image correctly due to loads of light being taken in, the photo is out of focus causing it to come out blurry to a point where its hard to distinguish what it is, its came out similar to a photo by Ralph Eugene Meatyard.
Meatyard made his living as an optician, born in 1925 and died in 1976. He was a member of the “Lexington camera club” and pursued his passion for photography outside the mainstream. He experimented with various strategies including multiple exposures, motion blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. Two of his series are particularly concerned with focus and depth of field, both stretching the expressive potential of photography, film and cameras when looking with the ordinary world. Here are some of his photos from his no focus collection.
– No focus- Reducing groups of human figures to indistinct abstractions, the artist proposes an alternate notion to the traditional photographic portrait.
A camera obscura consists of a dark box, tent or room with a small hole in one side or the top. with light from an external scene through the hole and strikes a surface inside, the scene is reproduced but inverted and reversed with colour and perspective preserved. Although camera obscura is old and we have developed more high-tech cameras the concept of camera obscura is still used by photographers world wide
These images are an example of how camera obscura works
Nicephore Niepce
Joseph Nicephore Niepce was a French inventor and one of the earliest pioneers of photography. Niepce used his heliography process which was an early photographic process producing a photoengraving image on a metal plate coated with an asphalt preparation to capture the first photograph, but his pioneering work was soon overshowed by the invention of daguerreotype.
Daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. the process required great care. The process required great care. The silver plated copper plate had first to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror
Louis Daguerre
Louis was a painter and a stage director. He was a student of Degotis, who was a creator of stage setting at the Paris opera, where he started at the age of 16.
while Daguerre works exhibited in the art shows that he never really had huge success, from 1817-1822 his work was shown at the opera brought him unanimous praise from critics and from the public, he displayed original creativity with his light effects, creating moon rises or moving suns that remained in peoples memories.
Daguerre was developing hislighting talents, acquired during his years as a set designer at the Opera and the Ambigu, to change the mood of a same scene. This created such an illusion of reality that the Diorama became a huge success. Later on, the two partners adapted to these huge sets the principle of showing the optical views either with front or back lighting. In this case the scene watched with a dim lighting, whence a night effect that could be accentuated by painting to the back of the view a decor with the purpose of masking some parts of the image creating new shadows corresponding to night. Going from one to the other lighting, the same scene would progressively change from day to night.
Daguerreotype
The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. The silver-plated copper plate had to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror
Henry Fox Talbot
Whilst on honeymoon in Italy with his wife Constance, Talbot tried to draw a picture of Lake Como using a camera Lucida. A camera Lucida is a drawing aid which uses a prism to allow the artist to simultaneously see the landscape before him or her and the drawing paper. Talbot was frustrated with the outcome of his drawing, especially in comparison to Constance’s accomplished artwork, and wished that the image made by the camera Lucida could be fixed in a more mechanical and accurate way.
Richard Maddox
Richard Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. Dry plate is a glass plate coated with a gelatin emulsion of silver bromide. It can be stored until exposure, and after exposure it can be brought back to a darkroom for development at leisure.
The advantages of the dry plate were obvious: photographers could use commercial dry plates off the shelf instead of having to prepare their own emulsions in a mobile darkroom. Negatives did not have to be developed immediately. Also, for the first time, cameras could be made small enough to be hand-held, or even concealed: further research created fast exposure times, which led to ‘snapshot’ photography (and the ‘Kodak’ camera with roll film), ultimately paving the way for cinematography.
George Eastman
When Eastman was 23, a colleague suggested that he take a camera on an upcoming vacation. Eastman bought a photographic outfit, and although he never made the journey, he became fully engrossed in photography. However, the weight, awkwardness, and cost of the equipment required to take and develop photographs soon led Eastman to seek improvements. He spent three years in his mother’s kitchen experimenting with gelatine emulsions, and by 1880, he had invented and patented a dry-plate coating machine.
In 1881, with the financial backing of Rochester businessman Henry Strong, Eastman formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company (reincorporated as the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in 1884 and as Eastman Kodak Company in 1892). With a series of innovations, the company created easy-to-use cameras that made photography widely accessible, established the practice of professional photofinishing, and developed a flexible film that was a critical contribution to the launch of the motion picture industry.
Kodak Brownie
The Kodak “Brownie” camera made its debut at the turn of the twentieth century and sold for one dollar. One hundred thousand of them were purchased during the first year alone. The Brownie helped to put photography into the hands of amateurs and allowed the middle class to take their own “snapshots” as well.
Eastman Kodak introduced the new Brownie dollar box camera in 1900; the release was supported by a major advertising campaign. The name “Brownie” was chosen primarily because of the popularity of a children’s book of cartoons of the same name, and partly because the camera was initially manufactured for Eastman by Frank Brownell of Rochester, New York.
Digital Photography
Digital photography is the process of capturing images electronically rather than by analog methods such as film or instant Polaroid’s. A digital image is captured to a solid state sensor containing an array of photodetectors or pixels. The digital images are then stored as a type of computer file* that can be processed, edited and corrected using software such as Adobe Photoshop.
Digital imaging, whether stills or video, encompasses capturing, storing, and manipulating images through electronic devices like cameras and smartphones. Unlike traditional film photography or video, digital for both mediums relies on sensors to convert light into digital data.
Harry Callahan was a pioneering American photographer who worked in both color and black-and-white. Among his best-known works are the numerous portraits of his wife Eleanor, who served as a constant model throughout his career. His prolific practice included taking took dozens of photographs a day
He tried several technical experiments double and triple exposure, blurs large and small format film. Callahan was one of the few innovators of modern American photography noted as much for his work in color as for his work in black and white.
Harry Callahan was born in Detroit, studied engineering at Michigan State University, and worked for Chrysler before taking up photography as a hobby in 1938. Callahan cited a visit by Ansel Adams to his local camera club in 1941 as the time he began to view photography seriously. Self-taught as a photographer, he found work in the General Motors Photographic Laboratories. In 1946, shortly after meeting László Moholy-Nagy, he was asked to join the faculty of the New Bauhaus (later known as the Institute of Design) in Chicago, where he became chairman of the photography department in 1949. He left Chicago in 1961 to head the photography department at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he remained until 1973. He has won many awards for his photography, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972 and the Photographer and Educator Award from the Society for Photographic Education in 1976, and he was designated Honored Photographer of the Rencontres Internationals de la Photography in Arles, France in 1977, and received ICP’s Master of Photography Infinity Award in 1991. Among the major exhibitions of his work
Harry Callahan has won many awards for his photography, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972 and the Photographer and Educator Award from the Society for Photographic Education in 1976, and he was designated Honored Photographer of the Rencontres Internationals da la photography in Arles, France in 1977, and received ICP Master of Photography Infinity Award in 1991
