36 Nebraskaland • May 2021
depict people or scenes accurately. Interestingly, the nature
photographers I know rarely use this focal length.
Focus and Depth of Field
Your eyes focus so quickly and naturally you almost never
think about it — until you reach your mid-to-late 40s and
can no longer focus on anything less than an arm's length
away. Your brain and eyes collaboratively decide what part
of a scene is most important and focus on that. A camera
doesn't know what your brain thinks is the focal point of a
scene, so you have to tell it what you want. Making conscious
decisions about something you usually do unconsciously
takes some practice.
Both your eyes and camera can only focus on a portion of
a scene at a time. If one object is close to you and another
is far away, you can only focus on one; the other will look
fuzzy. As you scan your surroundings, your brain constantly
concentrates on what's most interesting, and you don't even
notice that everything else is out of focus. In a photograph,
though, the viewer has time to scan the entire static image,
and portions that are out of focus become obvious, especially
if they include something of interest. On the fl ip side, an
out-of-focus background can help highlight the subject of a
photo, increasing an image's visual power.
"Depth of fi eld" is the distance between the nearest
and farthest objects away from you that appear in focus
simultaneously. In other words, there is a limited range of
space between you and the horizon that can be in focus when
you take a photo. Focal length and the distance between you
and the subject you focus on both infl uence depth of fi eld,
but the most important factor is aperture. The aperture of
your lens is the hole through which light enters the camera.
You can adjust the aperture, which is measured in f-stops.
Confusingly, a smaller aperture means a bigger f-stop number,
but remember that f-stops are fractions, so an aperture of f/8
is bigger than f/11.
Now, stop. Take a breath and read that last paragraph one
more time. It's a lot to remember all at once, but just know
that aperture aff ects depth of fi eld. A smaller hole creates
Both the badger and sunrise were photographed with the
same telephoto lens.
