This exercise required us to use our camera and lens to create a portrait where the focus was on the eyes.
Our instructions are to “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 35mm full-frame camera (about 65mm on a cropped-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.
An inside image on this cold rainy day (have I said how much its raining this summer in the High Peak?) so not particularly ‘good light’. However the exposure of 1/30th enabled a decent amount of light through.
The longish focal length and wide angle aperture has effectively blurred the background but given a sharp subject in the foreground.
This technique of combining a long focal length with a wide aperture has effectively separated my Mum from the background, her busy kitchen sink, plants on a window-cill, and through the window, the neighbours’ houses are effectively blurred so as not to be distracting.
Modern phone ‘apps’ and processing software will create this blurred background ‘bokeh’ effect for you if you haven’t the expertise or equipment to do it in-camera.
