raming your subject with other elements within the composition is one of the most called-upon techniques in photography. It’s an effective and creative approach, and when applied to close-up photography, the frame, more often than not, is an out-of-focus foreground sometimes accompanied by an out-of-focus background. When your in-focus subject is surrounded by out-of-focus tones and shapes, its visual weight is further enhanced and elevated to an almost regal stature.
When you wish to employ this wonderful technique, it is absolutely essential that you call upon depth-of-field preview again; and here, perhaps more than in any other situation, you’ll discover just how important it is to really pay attention to what is going on inside the viewfinder as you adjust the aperture up or down in an effort to create the most fine-tuned image possible.
Beaujolais is a famous wine region in the southeast of France. For me it is the Tuscany of France, not so much for the wine but for the photographic opportunities, with its numerous rustic and old villages set amongst a terrain of large hilltops and valleys. And although the grape harvest takes place near the end of September, there can still be found forgotten grape clusters on the vine when the colors of autumn set in near the end of October.
So, with my tripod-mounted camera and 75–300mm lens, I took a position in one vineyard row (location A, above), shooting a grape cluster in the next (location B). I made certain to choose a point of view that allowed me to shoot through foreground autumn-colored leaves in the row directly before me. These leaves became my out-of-focus foreground frame that called even further attention to the grape cluster hanging just 5 feet away. With the addition of one 12mm extension tube placed between my camera and lens, I was able to focus closer than what this lens normally allowed, and when combined with the right aperture choice (f/6.3, confirmed by the use of the DOF preview button), a cluster of grapes that captures the romance and appeal of French wine was the result.
75–300mm lens, 12mm extension tube, f/6.3 for 1/30 sec.
Out-of-focus framing is certainly not limited to grape clusters on vines, and it’s certainly not limited to using long telephoto lenses in the 200–400mm range. You can accomplish this selective focusing with a short or medium macro lens just as easily, and the only difference is that the out-of-focus foreground will, in all likelihood, be within an inch or two of your lens as it frames the distant subject. That was the situation when, anxious for some evidence of spring, I found myself in New York’s Central Park in the flower gardens at around 104th Street and Fifth Avenue. A few trees were blooming and so were a few of the tulips, and in the spirit of beggars can’t be choosers, I lay down beside one small group of blooming tulips, convinced that before I left I would have something that said “spring has arrived.” I was also happy to find these tulips with the remnants of the rain that had fallen a few hours earlier. With my Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens, I moved in really close to what would be the two foreground tulips in my composition and used them as out-of-focus frames that would call attention to the “distant” in-focus tulip behind. With my aperture at f/11, I pressed the DOF preview button and began stopping down from f/11 toward wide open in 1/3-stop increments. At f/7.1 I felt I had just the right amount of depth of field. All that remained was to adjust my shutter speed until 1/80 sec. indicated a correct exposure.
Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens, f/7.1
Learning to see and compose the right out-of-focus background is a constant goal of mine. I’m forever challenging myself to look for new ways to introduce this element into my work to accentuate and call further attention to my in-focus subject. One of the neatest tricks I’ve learned, particularly with flowers, is to find the perfect flower and choose a point of view that shows this flower against another flower in the background. The distance between the two flowers is important to note, as I only want the foreground flower to record as sharp while the flower behind is blurry. To do this, the right lens choice is critical.
In this example, although it may not be apparent, the background hibiscus flower is about 18 inches behind the one that is the main subject. When I started to compose the scene, the two blooms were not aligned (top), but with just a slight shift in my point of view, I got them lined up perfectly (middle). With my camera and 200–400mm lens and 36mm extension tube, I was able to easily zero in on the foreground flower, and with the lens set to f/5.6, I was able to limit the depth of field to the first flower and render the background flower an out-of-focus complement of color and shape. If I had shot this same image at f/16 or f/22, I would have recorded two flowers “walking all over each other,” due to the increase in depth of field. The eye would have deemed the resulting composition too undefined and chaotic.
200–400mm lens at 340mm, 36mm extension tube, f/5.6
