PCPhoto Magazine | Trade Tricks: The Selective Focus Technique

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Trade Tricks: The Selective Focus Technique

A Key Photographic Technique To Distinguish Your Subject From Its Surroundings

By Rob Sheppard

One of the challenges we face as photographers is making the subject stand out from its surroundings. An effective way to do this is to use the selective focus technique, which allows us to choose one part of the image to be sharp and in focus while making the rest out of focus. It’s the opposite of getting a lot of depth of field. While this technique lets the viewer know what’s important in the photo, it’s also a way to make interesting compositions that can’t be duplicated any other way.

It’s possible, and often useful, to create this effect in the computer by selecting one part of the photo, keeping it sharp and blurring the rest. Shooting the image with selective focus from the start has advantages, however: You spend less time on your photo in the computer; your composition better fits the in- and out-of-focus areas; the effect always looks natural (because it is); edges are never a problem (the computer-generated effect can be difficult with edges); there’s no problem with the “wrong” elements being sharp or unsharp; and transitions always look right.

Selective focus is accomplished with the following steps.

1. Choice Of ƒ-Stop. Choose your widest ƒ-stops, such as ƒ/2.8 or ƒ/4 (depending on the lens and focal length). Wide apertures minimize depth of field. You’ll need fast shutter speeds to balance this ƒ-stop in bright light. You also may need a neutral-density filter (a dark gray filter) to allow you to use wide ƒ-stops.

2. Telephoto Settings. Use telephoto settings of your zoom or choose a telephoto lens. The stronger the telephoto, the more dramatic the selective focus result.

3. Angle To Subject. Having strongly contrasting sharp versus unsharp areas of the photo makes this effect work its best. Often, this is done when you carefully choose your angle to the subject. Find the angle that keeps background or foreground elements farther from the focused subject (for example, go low to a close-up so the background seen by the lens is far away and, therefore, out of focus).

4. Deliberately Out-Of-Focus Areas. Look for an element you can shoot through or against that can be strongly out of focus in such a way to contrast with your in-focus subject. Deliberately move to get a feature “in the way” for an out-of-focus, colorful foreground, or find an interesting out-of-focus shape in the background. Even though it’s blurry, that feature still can be important for color and shape elements in your composition.

5. LCD Review. Check your composition in the LCD to be sure the in- and out-of-focus areas successfully complement each other. Enlarge the image in the LCD so you can see important details.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Selective focus can be achieved in the computer by masking the part of the image you’d like to be sharp and then applying a Gaussian blur to the other parts of the shot. It takes time and it’s not easy to get right, so it’s always better to get it right when you shoot.

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