Pleasanton Autumn & Abstracts (12-10-2014)

Recently, there were some really nice clouds in the sky and I haven't been out shooting in a while, so I went ahead and went out shooting some autumn foliage photos and did some black and white abstract photography around a residential neighborhood. These photos were shot in the late afternoon on 12-10-2014.

Full Resolution Photos: If you want to see full resolution photos of any of the photos you see here, use the following links. If you wish to purchase prints of any of the photos, please contact me here. To see my best autumn foliage photos, use this link. To view my best Pleasanton, CA photos for 2013 and 2014, use this link. To view my best monochrome/abstract photos for 2014, use this link. To see all of my 2014 Pleasanton, CA photos, use this link.

Autumn leaves that has fallen onto the ground. I thought they would make a good DOF photo. 

Black and white process of the photo above.  

 A black and white photo of a tree against the clouds in the sky. 

 Another black and white photo of a tree against the clouds in the sky.

Next, I saw a raven up on top of a tree. I thought it would make a nice silhouette abstract too.  

Another few photos of the raven on top of the tree. 

These are all the photos for today. Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Instagram. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

Depth-Of-Field (DOF) in Photography

Hi guys, today I am writing up a general tutorial on how Depth-Of-Field (DOF for short) works in photography. It is actually pretty easy to learn. DOF is pretty much how much of an image that can be in focus at certain settings. There is actually quite a lot of physics and how light travels, but I will just be giving a pretty general overview in this tutorial to help you take better photos.

For depth of field, here are the 2 rules you need to remember:

• The closer you are to an object, the less you can get in focus. The farther away, the more you can get in focus. That is why you see people using telephoto lenses to do portraits. Zoom in and back up if you want more in focus. 
• The wider your aperture, the less you can get in focus, however you get more light and faster shutter. The narrower your aperture, the more you can get in focus, however less light means slower shutter speed. Don't go too narrow, or you will experience blurriness. 

The distance is quite self explanatory, but aperture might be a bit confusing for beginners, so I will go into more detail here. The scale for aperture might be a bit confusing for beginners as the scale is kind of "opposite". The aperture is measured in f-stops (generally denoted as "f/XX" where "XX" is the aperture). The SMALLER the number, the BIGGER the aperture opening (example: f/2.8), more light and faster shutter speed. The BIGGER the number, the SMALLER the aperture opening (example: f/22), less light and slower shutter speed. If you are on a tripod and want everything in focus, you can use a smaller aperture, however when handheld, you want to balance these to not get motion blur, but still get a usable image. The widest aperture for the lens is generally denoted in the name of the lens (you can't go wider than that). Some zoom lenses have a variable aperture where the widest aperture will change as you zoom in and out. You usually find two aperture numbers in the names of those lenses. 

For landscape shots, you don't want to go all out f/22. When the aperture opening gets that small, a different type of distortion occurs and you will get a blurry image that looks out of focus. I generally use an f/14 and f/16 for my landscape shots, but the "good aperture" varies lens to lens and is something you want to experiment with and balance out with DOF. When handheld, I use a middle of the road aperture for landscape shots somewhere from f/8 to f/11.

If you want to experiment with the aperture controls to further control DOF, you can do so in the following modes of your camera: A or Av (Aperture Priority), M (Manual), or B (Bulb) modes.

Below are some sample photos to show you the DOF from controlling the aperture. These photos are shot at Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA on my road trip from the SF Bay Area to Vancouver, BC, Canada. You can view the photos from my trip here. The photos are of the giant steel cables keeping the bridge up. I thought they would make a great DOF subject to do a tutorial on.

This first photo is shot at f/2.8, a very wide aperture with less of the cable in focus. 

Here is a photo at f/5. As you can see more of the cable is in focus now. 

Here is a photo at f/2.8. See how very little of the cable is in focus. 

Here is another photo at f/5. As you can see more of the cable is in focus. 

This is it for the tutorial! I hope it has helped you out a bit with your photography. :) Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Instagram. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

Depth of Field in Photography (Video)

This video explains what depth of field in photography is and how you can adjust it in your camera.

Key Points:

• Depth of Field = DOF
• Wide DOF is narrow aperture, high F-stop number, and will have most/all of your photo in focus. This is generally used for landscape shots.
• Narrow DOF is wide aperture, low F-stop number, and will blur out most of the foreground/background. This is generally used for portraits, animal, macro, etc photos.

If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe me here.

Message from author: Looks like I broke my promise again! This isn't Monterey photos right? XD Well first of all, sorry! Second of all, I want to tell you all something. This is the first photography tip/tutorial video I made and I plan on doing more of these "lectures" in the future. If you haven't done so, the link to my Youtube channel is above, so please subscribe if you love photography! Have a nice day. I will begin the Monterey photos tomorrow. No more excuses!