Practice is the best way to get better at anything. This really applies to photography. There are so many technical things to learn, you need to practice them often to make the technical part second nature. Once you’ve got the technical parts down, you can focus solely on the creative. But of course, practicing the creative parts is important too (and fun).
I put together 52 weeks of photography assignments for 2020 so you can practice your photography skills, no matter what level you’re at. There aren’t any hard rules for this. If you don’t get a chance to do the challenge one week, you can always catch up the next, or just skip that week. The main point of this is to get you using your camera at least once a week, if not daily.
I’ve alternated the themes over four week sets of the following categories: subject/moment, lighting, composition, and technical. The technical prompts might be a little more challenging if you’re just using a cell phone camera, but I’ll offer some workarounds for that each week.
The full list is below, but I’ll be making a blog post every week to further explain and give some examples. You’ll find this especially handy with the more technical assignments.
Below are the blog posts for the weeks that have been posted so far:
You can follow me on Instagram at @documentyourdaytoday and use the hashtag #documentyour2020. I’ll feature some of your work on my Instagram (with permission), but check out the hashtag to see everyone’s work.
Week 1: Photograph Someone You Love
January 1-7, 2020
I’ve been a professional photographer for over a decade and over the years, I’ve learned how important it is to document the people in our lives. People change so quickly, even if it’s not apparent when you see them every day.
This week’s challenge is to photograph someone you love. If you don’t have anyone handy, you could choose a pet or do a self portrait instead. This image can be posed or candid, your choice.
Below are some examples of candid photos of individuals. I’m going to try to take a portrait this week, because I very rarely take individual portraits. If you regularly photograph people, try taking a different type of portrait/candid than usual.
I remember when I was just starting out and I posted a session with the photos below. Someone, who was attending photography school, e-mailed me and asked how I got that blurry background. I was a bit shocked that someone studying photography would ask me, since I felt like a total newbie at the time. But I can understand why someone would ask this question, because the blurred background isn’t something you can easily achieve with a point-and-shoot or phone camera. It seems like it requires either expensive equipment or special knowledge. It doesn’t. Ok, maybe a little bit of knowledge, which is what this post is for. And a DSLR or camera with manual controls is helpful too.
Canon 5D, 50mm f1.8, at f/1.8, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
Canon 5D, 50mm f1.8, at f/1.8, 1/320 sec, ISO 100
The above photos were taken with the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens, which is currently $134 on Amazon.ca (updated April 2020). I highly recommend that new photographers get a basic 50mm f1.8 lens if they’re interested in shooting portraits. The Nikon equivalent is the AF-S version, which is $249 on Amazon. There’s a cheaper version for $159, but it only works in manual focus with most inexpensive Nikon DSLRs. So, for $250 or less, you can take the photos above. I did use the Canon 5D body, which is a pro body, but it’s also really old (circa 2005). You can probably pick a used one up for less than $500.
There are two main things that affect the blurriness of the background. These are depth of field and lens compression.
Depth of Field
Usually when people talk about how blurry or sharp the background is, they’re talking about the depth of field. The above images have a shallow depth of field. A deep depth of field would have the trees/grass in the background in focus, or at least more in focus.
What affects depth of field?
1. Aperture
This is the thing that most people focus on when trying to achieve shallow depth of field, and it’s probably the easiest to implement and understand. I think I shot the entire above session on f1.8, because I knew that a low aperture would give me that cool blurry background effect.
With all other factors remaining the same, a wider/lower aperture will give you less depth of field (i.e. more blur) and a higher aperture will give you more depth of field. That’s why the 50mm 1.8 is great, because its lowest aperture is f1.8. For most kit lenses (that come with the camera), the lowest aperture is f3.5 (and f5.6 when zoomed in).
Hint: if you look at your lens, it will have the focal length and lowest aperture marked on it (ex: 50mm 1:1.8 or 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 – the latter meaning the lowest aperture is 3.5 at 18mm zoom and 5.6 at 55mm zoom).
Below is an animated GIF that shows the same camera/lens in the same position, with only the aperture changing (and shutter speed/ISO to keep the exposure the same). I kept my focus point on the front figure for all of the photos. See the difference between f1.8 and f4? And f4 and f8? You can even see the depth of field changing in the grain of the table. It’s a distinct line on the 1.8 image and spreads to include the entire table.
Therefore, to make your background blurrier, use a lower aperture.
2. Distance between Camera & Subject and Subject & Background
In the below example, the aperture is fairly low (f2.8) on a 50mm lens. The couple is in the same position and their distance to the background is always the same, but I moved closer to them in the second photo. Notice how much more blurry the background looks?
50mm f1.8, at f/2.8, 1/200 sec, ISO 5000 (only my distance from the subjects changed)
The closer you are to your subject, the smaller the depth of field. This means that you should be careful when shooting portraits very close to your subject with a wide aperture. Focus on the eye that’s closest to the camera, because one of the eyes may go out of focus. If you just try to get your focal point anywhere on their face, you may end up with just their nose in focus.
Below is an example of a photo taken very close to my subject. I focused on the flower hanging from the shoulder of her dress. Notice how the focus starts to drop off right away behind the focal point? If I’d been standing five feet away instead of right next to her, her entire body would be more or less in focus, like in the above examples
35mm 1.4, at f/2.0, 1/320 sec, ISO 1000
In the below example, the aperture is again f2.8 on a 50mm lens. The couple is in the same position, but I rotated my position slightly, causing the background to be closer to them, and moved myself farther from the subjects. The closer the subjects are to the background, the sharper the background will be (if all other settings are the same). The depth of field stays the same, but the background moves into the sharp area.
50mm f1.8, at f/2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 1000 (my distance from the subjects and their distance from the background changed)
Therefore, if you want the background to be blurry, move the camera closer to the subjects and/or the subjects farther from the background.
3. Sensor Type
If you’re just learning photography with a DSLR, chances are you have a crop-sensor camera. Pro-level cameras are usually full-frame. A crop-sensor effectively multiplies focal length by the crop factor (usually 1.4 or 1.6), so a 50mm lens becomes 70mm or 80mm instead. It doesn’t behave exactly like a 70-80mm lens though. It’s a bit too complicated for me to go into here, but generally the same lens on a full frame camera will have shallower depth-of-field than on a crop-sensor, therefore a blurrier background.
Lens compression is similar to depth of field in effect, but it’s caused by different things. It’s seen when you use a different focal length.
We’ve discussed focal length a bit. On a 50mm lens, the focal length is 50mm. On the typical 18-55mm kit lens, the focal length zooms from 18mm to 55mm. With distance to subject and settings remaining the same, the background will be blurrier with a longer focal length. This is primarily due to lens compression.
Here’s an example where I tried to kept the camera the same distance from the subject and the aperture at f2.8, but changed from a 35mm to 50mm lens. I cropped the below image down to show about the same area (of course, the 35mm originally captured a larger area). You can see that the background is blurrier with the 50mm lens and the lens also compresses the background towards the subject (makes it seem closer) while the 35mm lens brings more of the edges in. There’s more to be said about compression, but for this lesson, we’ll just say that longer lenses will cause your background to be blurrier if all other settings remain the same.
Summary
In summary, to get a blurrier background, you can try the following:
Use a lower aperture (smaller f-stop number, like 1.4 vs. 5.6)
Move the camera closer to the subjects
Move the subjects farther from the background
Use a full frame camera vs. a crop sensor camera
Use a longer lens or focal length (i.e. 85mm vs 35mm) – zoom in
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I teach beginner’s photography workshops in Victoria, BC and I wanted to make a list of resources for my students and other photography enthusiasts at various levels. I’ll add to this list as I discover new resources. Let me know your favourites in the comments.
Picture Perfect Practice is an excellent book for learning composition techniques and getting into the habit of breaking them down and practicing them. It also has some sections on posing, though I hear his book Picture Perfect Posing is even better for that. I’ve only read part of it so far, but have heard great things about it from other pro photographers. This book is great for both beginners, seasoned pros, and anyone in between.
I haven’t tried it, but a lot of people recommend Lynda.com for tutorials on photo editing. Many libraries include free access to this site. You can also find a lot of great photography and editing tutorials on YouTube. Here’s a list of some great YouTube photography tutorial channels.
Blogs
Photography Concentrate has a ton of great articles for photographers of various levels, but is especially helpful to newer photographers. They have some excellent ebooks for purchase, but the blog is a source of a lot of helpful and free information.
Digital Photography School has a ton of useful articles on various types of photography. There’s so much information here, I suggest using the search function.
You can also follow my blog for photography tips. I’ll be posting more in the coming months. Let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to cover.
Note: some of the links above are affiliate links, but I have personally used all of the above resources unless otherwise noted.
Why should you take a photography course, read an instructional book, or figure out how to use your camera beyond pointing and shooting? Cameras are so smart these days. You can get great photos with a basic DSLR in auto mode, right? You don’t even have to know anything about photography.
My beginners’ classes are full of people who want to learn more about their cameras, who want to improve their photos, and who are frustrated with the results from shooting in auto. It doesn’t take much time to learn how to dramatically improve your photos by taking back control from the camera’s automatic settings. Beyond that, it’s all about practice.
Have you ever experienced any of the following situations?
The Accidental Silhouette
What’s the problem? When your subjects are in front of a bright background, like the sky or ocean, the camera tends to underexpose the image (i.e. make it too dark) and your subjects become silhouettes. The camera tries to make the entire frame average out to a medium gray. You need to expose for your subjects and not the entire scene.
You can fix this with: manual exposure or exposure compensation; spot metering
Weird Colour Casts (aka incorrect white balance)
What’s the problem? The camera, using auto white balance settings, is misreading the colours in the scene and chose an incorrect colour temperature. White balance is used to remove colour casts from your images and try to present them as the eye sees them.
You can fix this with: learning how to change your white balance in camera and/or shooting in RAW and correcting later
Too Much or Too Little Motion Blur
What’s the problem? You wanted to show motion, as above, but the camera froze the subject. Or more commonly, you wanted to freeze the motion, but the subject was blurry instead. This is a problem with shutter speed. The image on the left has a shutter speed of 1/640 and the one on the right is 1/100.
You can fix this with: learning how shutter speed works (basically, a slower shutter speed shows more motion blur)
Focus on the Wrong Subject
What’s the problem? You want to focus on a subject other than what the camera wants to focus on. Cameras with face detection might focus on the wrong person and cameras without might focus on something else entirely.
You can fix thiswith: using a single focal point and moving it onto your subject
Too Much is in Focus
What’s the problem? You wanted the background to be blurry, but your camera got everything in focus instead. For the above images, I used a 35mm lens at f4 for the image on the left and f1.6 for the image on the right.
