Weekend Photography Challenge #13: GRAIN – 31+ Days To Better Photography

This week’s topic is GRAIN.

Grain can be taken a number of ways and it’s up to you to interpret the theme. That’s half the fun! It can be grain that grows, grain in wood, grain in the image…anything you like!

I’ve been receiving a number of questions lately about depth of field and I want you to play around with this one again, because I think it’s important. What I’d like is for you to use any lens you like and set it to f/11 for the aperture. I know I haven’t specifically listed out depth of field in its own blog post, but I think you will know what to do. Use f/11 but make sure SOMETHING is out of focus in the frame. Here’s a hint: change your proximity to the target, or zoom. Play around and let me know what you find.

Post a link to your photo in the comments section below before I hit the hay on Monday night. Are there prizes? Not this week, but I will hand out 34,000 massively useless points if it helps. One day I hope to be able to hand out thanks for participating. For now it’s just words and my hope that you do get a chance to learn something along the way.

Steve M

Posted August 6, 2011 at 8:19 PM

Here is Grain: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6001/6016298893_985bdd55ce_b.jpg

Posted August 6, 2011 at 8:54 PM

Oops! Sorry I missed that the depth of field was part of this challenge.
Here is Grain with DOF: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6008/6016364289_2d9eb57086_b.jpg

Peter West Carey

Posted August 9, 2011 at 8:55 PM

Steve,
Did you find it hard to keep the Aperture at f/11 and still make it interesting? What did you do to compensate for the larger depth of field?
- Steve M
  
  Posted August 10, 2011 at 6:13 AM
  
  Since I was shooting with a 100mm macro lens close to 1:1 I believe it would have been difficult to get much greater depth of field irregardless of the aperture. The first shot was straight on, so everything was equidistant from the lens and entirely in focus. After I realized the paragraph on depth of field was part of the assignment and not simply an aside for teaching, all I had to do was tip the bucket to give some depth to the subject.