A Question about Blurred Background.

[Jennifer Bachman]

Hi @aarongeis

I have a question for you please. I saw a wonderful photo, unfortunately I don’t remember where, but it was of a young lady standing beside a very long brick wall (it looked like it was shot kind of at a angle), that was in focus in the front, but the behind the young lady was very very blurred (almost like you would do when you pan and there are streaks in the background).

My question is how is this done? This was a super cool shot (I wish I had marked where it was to show you what I was talking about) and I would love to try to do it myself..

I went out this afternoon with the hubby and tried to do the same thing but it just didn’t come out right.

Here is the first photo I shot

Settings: Canon EOS Rebel T3, 55mm Lens, F/5.6 , 1/60 Sec, ISO – 100, no flash on a tripod

Practice with Focal Length by Jennifer Bachman on Light Stalking

Second Shot

Settings: Canon EOS Rebel T3, 75mm Lens, F/5.6, 1/80 Sec, ISO – 100 No Flash on a Tripod

Second shot of Hubby by Jennifer Bachman on Light Stalking

Third shot

Settings : Canon EOS Rebel T3, 75mm Lens , F/4, 1/200 Sec, ISO -100 shot with Filler Flash and Tripod

Final Photo of Hubby by Jennifer Bachman on Light Stalking

The Third shot was almost there, but not quite.. It’s blurred but does not have the cool streaking effect I was looking for and I would have liked to have more of the brick wall in front of him.. I used a zoom lens on photo 2 and 3.

If I used a Macro Lens, would I get the effect I wanted?

Thanks so much for your help.. Jenn

[Aaron Geis]

Hi Jenn @sweetness29157,

There’s a shot that’s in the playbook of many portrait and wedding photographers where they have the subject lean against a wall and shot from an extreme angle with a short depth of field – probably f/2.8, f/2, f/1.4 range

You’re close with the third shot, just ask your husband to actually lean against the wall and then you take a position as close to the wall as you can while still keeping the wall as the background, and open up your lens if you can.

The other two elements – foreground in focus and streaky quality – are more unusual.

It would be possible to keep the foreground in focus by using a smaller aperture and using the hyperfocal method of placing the focus just so.

The streaks, well, I’d have to see the shot in question.

Streaks can be created by zooming the lens during the exposure or by having the subject and photographer moving against a stationary background but in both of those cases the foreground would also be blurred and for the lens zooming technique the subject would be blurry as well unless a flash was used to freeze a portion of the exposure (it would be quite tricky to get the flash to fire just at the point that the subject was in focus but I guess a lot of trial and error might eventually work).

Or, of course, a Photoshop composite of two or more photos might have been used.

A macro lens is not the answer. Macro lenses are for subjects that are so small that a normal lens can’t focus close enough to fill the frame with the small subject.

There are specialty lenses called tilt-shift lenses that can be used to add to the short depth of field effect but they wouldn’t create streaks really.

Hope that helps.

[Gordon James]

Streaking added using the Blur tool in Photoshop?

As far as I know, only panning and zooming produce streaking in-camera, with an apparently static subject. Anything else is likely to be prost-proc.

[Gordon James]

Or is this what you mean by ‘streaking’

Spigot

[Jennifer Bachman]

Hi @aarongeis,

Thank you so much, your explanation was excellent..I just finished my NYIP Unit 3 Exam (WOW what a bugger that was), so now I am going to take a day or two off and just take photos and play.

you know @gordonjames, I was wondering myself if perhaps that effect was done in photoshop.. btw thanks for the link to the photo..it is almost what I was talking about, but as I told @aarongeis, it was streaked almost like when you pan a photo and the back ground is really streaked.

I will have to check in photo shop and see how that is done..Now that I am taking a couple days off, will have more time to play around with my photos.

Thank you both for your help, as always I really appreciate it.. Have a great week.. Jenn

[Aaron Geis]

Hi Jenn @sweetness29157,

Here’s a link to the type of shot I was thinking of, pretty much the same as the example provided by @gordonjames but featuring a person as the subject.

http://blog.zingrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/Ludacris-Brick-Wall.jpeg

[Jennifer Bachman]

Hi @aarongeis

Thanks for sharing the link..Great shot. Love the photo. Great example to go by when I retake the photo. Thanks again.

[Jennifer Bachman]

Hi @aarongeis

Here is a shot I took this morning of my pug Bourne..Think I got the technique like the photo you showed me..

look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Settings: Canon EOS Rebel T3, Lens 27mm, F/4, 1/200 sec, Shot with a tripod

8-20-14 Bourne .jpg by Jennifer Bachman on Light Stalking

[Aaron Geis]

HI Jenn @sweetness29157,

That’s a cute shot and pretty much the idea.

If you move just bit away from the wall and angle the camera towards the wall so that the end of the wall is just about at the edge of the frame then you’ll be seeing more of the converging lines effect.

The extreme blurriness of the lines is created by having a lens that can open up to f/1.4 or so.

Sigma makes a 30mm f/1.4 that is designed for APS-C sensor cameras like yours and either that lens or the Canon 28mm f/1.8 would be a good addition to your kit if you don’t already have something like that.

[Jennifer Bachman]

Thanks so much @aarongeis, I will give that a try..This time will get Dh to help..Pug wrangling is hard work..LOL

I will have to put the Canon 28mm F/1.8 on my Birthday wish list.. BG Thanks for the suggestion. I know it will be a nice addition to kit.

Hope you have a wonderful week-end. Thanks again.. Jenn

[Aaron Geis]

Hi Jenn @sweetness29157,

Here’s a quick shot of my son, an unwilling model but I got a half-way ok expression out of him for once.

I don’t have a brick wall here but this shows how a very shallow depth of field renders a stone wall when shot at a steep angle.

Canon 5DII | Contax/Zeiss 50mm f/1.4

1/640th | f/1.4 | ISO 160

[Jennifer Bachman]

Hi @aarongeis

Love the photo..Your son sounds like my husband, It hard to get him to smile when I am trying to take a photo..

Thanks so much for the example..I am going to give this a try using your settings, later on , when the sun is not so bright..

Thank you again..And tell your son thanks as well..

[Author]

Posts