Photo by: yangmc.

I chose “Flower” today out of the popular tags on Flickr. Not really sure why. But after some lackluster photos, I came across this one. Not especially awe-inspiring, but nice and technically sound. I really love the depth of field and sharpness here. The subject (the plant in the focus) is really crisp and sharp. The rest of the image is more or less completely blurry and out of focus. When you’re doing macro work like this, you need to have a shallow depth of field; otherwise the subject won’t stand out against the background. That means a quick lens and the ability to focus on a macro level and get in close to the object itself.

Photo by: Marco Nedermeijer.

I found this cool shot of seashells in the recent uploads section of Flickr. It was shot with a f/1.8 50mm lens wide open, giving it really shallow depth of field. The small group of seashells in the middle is in focus, but the picture very quickly drops out of focus as you move away from that center point. In this case, I think the depth of field is just a titch too shallow, and the image might be better served if the other parts are more in focus. After taking a second look, it’s also possible that the outer parts of the image were blurred after the fact in Photoshop. If so, then I think it was a little over-zealous…

But a cool image nonetheless, and a good illustration of selectively focusing on one subject and one subject only.