What is Selective Focus?

The topic of our November competiton is "selective focus." Another term for this is "shallow depth of field." An image with selective focus or a shallow depth of field means that something in the image is in sharp focus while the rest of the image falls out of focus. Here are a few stock photography images that illustrate the effect:

Look carefully at each of the photos above and ask yourself, what is in focus in the image? Notice that in all cases, most of the image is out of focus, but some part is sharp and clear. The area in sharp focus is where the photographer wants the viewer to look. The out of focus portion of the image supports the in-focus part by providing context.

How Do You Achieve Selective Focus?

Understanding what selective focus looks like is half the battle. Now you need to figure out how to achieve it. If you're using a DSLR or mirrorless camera, do these three things:

1. Find a subject that is fairly far away from the background. Ideally, this should be at least a couple of feet. You can definitely get the effect with a closer background, but it's much easier if the distance is large.

2. Use the widest aperture you can. In other words, set your f-stop to smallest f-number your lens supports. This might be anywhere from f1.8 to f5.6.

3. Get as close as possible to your subject and make sure your camera is focused on the subject. After you take the photo, check your focus. Remember, your goal is to get the subject tack sharp. If your subject is blurry, see the note below.

You can also get selective focus using a phone camera, but it's a little bit more difficult because phone cameras tend to give you everything in focus. But the same principles apply. You need to be physically close to your subject and the background needs to be far away. You should then be able to tap on the subject to tell the phone camera to focus on it. If this doesn't work, then try using your phone camera's "portrait mode." Portrait mode simulates shallow depth of field using software. And although it's called portrait mode, you can use it to photograph any object, not just people.

Note: One thing to be careful of regardless of the type of camera you are using is to be sure that you're not shooting too close to the subject. Every lens, camera or phone, has what's known as a "minimum focusing distance." That means if you're too close, your subject will be blurry. It's a good idea to experiment with the camera or phone to figure out the closest distance you can shoot from that allows you to reliably get the subject in focus.