P#27 Q4B: A Few Tips for Advanced Selective Focus Photography

Take It To the Limit

Brenda Tharp: Take your selective focus photography to the limit. Shoot wide open on your lens. If your lens goes to f2.8, put the lens at f2.8. The really cool thing about that is if the lens is at its widest aperture, then what you see through the lens is exactly what you're going to get.

There is no depth of field. Even if you push the button, you're not going to see anything change because the lens is now wide open. Use that and work with getting just one edge of something in focus.

This idea works really well with macro nature photography because you can maybe just get one drop or two or three drops in focus on a flower petal and the rest of the picture will be sort of soft and dreamy behind it. Or you might capture the curl of a petal or the curl of a leaf.

You can work on just getting the edge and that wide aperture is going to give everything else this soft, out of focus effect which will blend colors. It's a really beautiful expressive way to capture the beauty of nature. This selective focus photography doesn't work if you're doing a landscape, of course, but when you're doing intimate and/or macro views, it's really great for that.

You might also want to think about making a picture that is not in focus at all. I just finished critiquing one of my classes at Better Photo and it was amazing. There were two images that were deliberately done out of focus and they were so effective.

Your brain says, "Wait a minute. We work so hard to get everything sharp, and now she's telling us to throw the whole thing out of focus?" but if you're trying to be more expressive and trying to create a more abstract effect, an impression of your scene, out of focus if it's the right amount can really do that. It just takes a lot of practice because the brain doesn't want to accept anything out of focus.

Audri Lanford: When you and I spent a day together in San Francisco you let me try a Lensbaby. I just recently bought one.

Brenda Tharp: The Lensbabies are great for selective focus photography because you have the flexibility of using the lens and rocking it into position to get it to just where you want it in that sweet spot. I really love doing it with that.

Before the Lensbabies were out, I had been using selective focus for a long time with traditional lenses but, I got real excited when the Lensbaby was manufactured. I have all three versions of it at this point and I just love them.

To Sum Up

If you're already familiar with selective focus photography, you might want to think about taking it to the next level. According to Brenda Tharp, that means pushing it to the limit and shooting wide open. The more you push yourself, the better your selective focus photography will become.