Project 2 -
Exercise 2.3: Focus
"Find a location with good light for a portrait shot. Place your subject some distance in front of a simple background and select a wide aperture together with a moderately long focal length such as 100mm on a full 35mm full-frame camera. Take a viewpoint about one and a half metres from your subject, allowing you to compose a headshot comfortably within the frame. Focus on the eyes and take the shot."
The shot below was taken on a bright sunny day at my local park. I positioned my subject on a pathway with trees either side to have a background with depth and focused on the eyes.
I stepped away from the subject to around a metre and a half and used a focal length of 34mm as I thought this focal length worked well with the distance from the subject. I also used the widest aperture for this shot of f/4.5. The background is effectively blurred for a portrait shot.
There is one factor that has bugged me about this photo - The shadow under my subjects cheeks which I didn't notice until I put the photo through Light Room.
ISO 200 ~ 34mm ~ f/4.5 ~ 1/1250sec
I wanted to have another go at this exercise and so tried a few things differently from the photo above. I stayed indoors with a different subject and used my longest focal length of 55mm with the largest aperture my camera would allow at this focal length of f/5.6.
Again I stepped about a metre and a half back and focused on the eyes. Comparing the two photos, I feel the second image came out the better of the two. The background in the first photo seems to be a little too out of focus compared to the second image and the lighting is better in the second image also.
