DAY 264

NATURE & LANDSCAPES

Wide Depth of Field

I WANT IT ALL ...

Photography is painting with light. Instead of using a brush and canvas, you’re using a machine to capture a moment in time. The more you understand how a camera captures an image, the less time you spend getting the right setting, and the more time you spend being creative.

Think about depth of field, and whether it should be narrow or wide. When you see that beautiful waterfall in the distance, with the autumn leaves lying on the ground at your feet, you envision a shot that has a wide depth of field. It is in focus from directly in front of the camera to as far as you can see. From experience you know that setting the aperture at f/22 will mean losing the ability to hand-hold the camera (because the shutter speed decreases each time the f/stop number increases), but you also realize that doing so increases depth of field. You set up your tripod, and before pressing the shutter release, you set the self-timer to 10 seconds. You step back and wait, capturing a shot that’s in focus from near to far. —WTD

Photo © Bill Diller.