Narrow Plain

Canon 60D, EF 50mm f1.8, f1.8, ISO1600, 1/500s, 50mm

If you've ever wondered why photographers preach the need for a fast 50mm lens, this image is a good example of what they were talking about, well, at least from one perspective - narrow depth of field. Getting a 50mm prime also makes you zoom with your feet to compose a shot rather than relying on a telephoto zoom to do it for you, but I bought my f1.8 50mm for taking portraits so that I could control the focal plain of an image, like this one.

On Saturday's, my son and I are usually up early and he typically spends that time playing on the iPad or computer, all the while unintentionally posing for my camera! I normally compose pics of him straight on because of his huge brown eyes, which really accent catchlights and make for awesome portraits. As I was rolling around him this past Saturday, his profile was illuminated quite beautifully and I decided to try photographing it instead of the straight on composition. Remember, move around the subject and look for different angles - I have to tell myself this all of the a time!

My want for this frame was to open up the aperture to 1.8, as wide as I could go, and only get the edge of the profile in focus and everything else nicely melted away in blurrage - I wanted to only have the eye, eyelash and curvature of the face in focus and everything else out. This took moving to exactly the right spot on his side and focusing tightly on the eye. The camera was set to AI-Servo with the focus point held directly on his eye tracking any movement.

Honestly, this is one of my favorite portraits of Sam. I love how the light is kissing his face and only that portion of him is in focus. It draws your eye directly to that spot and even though there are no catchlights in the eye, you can still see who he is.

What have we learned? The wide open aperture of a 50mm prime (or 85mm or 105mm) allows for amazing control in determining the point of focus in a portrait and, always move around and look for alternative angles to shoot from. This can really open up your creative eye to some cool compositions!