Summon the Power of the Blur

 Your iPhone photography can all be a blur, but you can choose where. The choice is right at your fingertip.

How can you bring the power of a crystal-clear subject into focus as you take aim? The iPhone has a rudimentary method of letting you  ‘choose’ your depth of field. Just tap the screen before you shoot, and you’ll see a yellow box outlined with a sunshine symbol. That’s where your iPhone will give you maximum sharpness, within a certain range, and that’s where it’s taking a light reading. (You can choose to brighten or darken it then and there, just by sliding the sunshine symbol up and down along the yellow vertical line, or you can take care of that later in an editing app or Adobe Lightroom.) But back to your focal point.

Use depth of field for emphasis in your photographs to lend your voice to your work.  

The focus point you’ve tapped makes a difference, especially in extreme closeup situations like my two iCactus pictures above. In the first photo, I tapped the detail closest to me, and the result is a crisp foreground, but the background is a blur. That’s as it should be; I wanted to emphasize the new growth nearest the camera lens.

In the second photo, I tapped the area farthest from my camera, and got a foreground that’s blurred. That’s a scenario that works often, depending on composition and subject matter, but not in this case, because what’s sharpest is also too far away—and thus too minimal within the frame—to draw the eye. Agreed?

So with just one tiny tap, you’ve summoned the power of depth of field to your iPhone. And using depth of field for emphasis in your photographs lends your voice to your work. ♣

How do you prefer your blur, foreground or aft?

There are plenty more iPhoneography tips and tricks HERE. For more photographs featuring Mother Nature’s generosity, visit my Naturescapes Shop.

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