Let’s get straight to the issue. Here is a guide for you to learn how to take more stunning portraits by using the butterfly lighting technique.

To capture greater portraits, studio-portrait photographers employ a variety of lighting setups. Butterfly lighting is one of them.

While butterfly lighting is set mostly to showcase the beauty in portraits, this portrait lighting technique is one of the first ones that new photographers learn because it looks good on a variety of subjects. Additionally, it is inexpensive and simple to learn!

So, if you want to learn the butterfly lighting technique and take more amazing portraits, you are reading the right post.

What is Butterfly Lighting?

Butterfly lighting is a portrait lighting technique that places the key light above and downward toward the subject’s face. This casts a striking shadow that resembles a butterfly under the nose and chin.

Using butterfly lighting is ideal for portraiture and headshots. It is one of the best lighting methods for sculpting facial features.

Another name for it is “Paramount lighting,” after the Hollywood company of the same name that used it to highlight its most stunning and elegant ladies.

What is Butterfly Lighting Used for?

Butterfly lighting is a technique that is employed for taking portraits. It is one of the most popular lighting arrangements because it has a light pattern that virtually everyone finds attractive.

It allows you to emphasize cheekbones and cast shadows beneath them, as well as under the neck, making the figure appear slimmer.

Butterfly lighting is used for showcasing beauty, boudoir, and glamor. So, it is ideal for photographing women, men, kids, models, actors, and actresses.

How to Take Butterfly Lighting Portraits?

Lighting setups for the butterfly technique are easy. The key light is a single source that is placed in perfect alignment with the subject’s face and the camera. A reflector can be positioned beneath the subject to bounce light back up into the face if the shadows are a little too deep.

Here is how you should set up the butterfly lighting:

Butterfly lighting places the primary light at an angle just above the subject, similar to flat lighting, which shines the light directly on the subject’s face. The resulting light softens the face and casts shadows beneath the chin and nose.

As a fill light for the chin area, you may use a reflector underneath. Reflectors are excellent tools for balancing light.

What Do You Need to Capture Butterfly Lighting?

Here are the things you need to take portraits with the butterfly lighting technique:

1. Key Light

Key light is necessary for butterfly lighting and can either be a flash unit or continuous. For continuous light, you can use the sun (natural light), LEDs, strobes, and speedlights.

Your key light must be pointed at the target (subject’s face). This should ideally be a few feet in front of the subject and about a foot or so over their head.

2. Camera and Lens

Generally speaking, you can use any camera to take portraits with the butterfly lighting technique.

However, one with interchangeable lenses is the ideal option. Depending on your budget, you can use a DSLR or a mirrorless camera to take studio portraits.

The sensor size is a more significant issue. A full-frame camera will produce photographs with sharper details if your budget allows it. But you can still use a crop sensor camera to take some amazing butterfly pictures.

Regarding the lens, working with focal lengths that mimic the human eye or longer is recommended to prevent face distortion; any lens above 50 mm can be adequate.

3. Flashes and Triggers

Flashes and triggers are other things you need. Triggers are two gadgets that you can use to wirelessly activate the flash. One piece fits on the hot shoe of your camera. Your flash unit’s base should hold the other one.

This enables you to place the flash anywhere you need to create the desired lighting effect.

You need someone to hold the flash in the proper position for butterfly lighting. Alternately, you need to mount your flash. But make sure the stand is reliable and stable.

4. Modifiers

You can add a modifier if you are using flashes. Modifiers will aid in light diffusion. Softboxes and even umbrellas are typical examples if you do not want to spend on professional modifiers.

Also, if you are just starting out, keep in mind that you can rent equipment. By doing this, you can experiment with various modifiers and their results to see which ones you prefer before buying your own.

5. Reflector

Using a reflector is an excellent method to increase light and reduce dark shadows in your butterfly lighting setup. In other words, you can better balance your light by using reflectors.

Even after you’ve set your key light and modifier, your subject’s chin may still have shadows. To reduce the harshness of that shadow, place the reflector beneath them and slant it toward their face.

If you have tight budget issues, you can use a large piece of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil as a reflector to balance the light.

Of course, you need someone to hold the reflector if you do not have all the studio equipment. The subjects themselves can hold the reflector underneath them in this case if their arms and hands are not visible in the photograph.

Useful Tips for Taking Butterfly Lighting Portraits

• You know you can always go one step further and be as creative as you can. For instance, you can use fairy elements such as fairy lights to create more stunning portraits. Or, you can add a colorful overlay or even a snowfall effect when editing your photos.
• Go creative with the subject’s face. Try different angles. Moreover, by adjusting the intensity of the light, you can create fabulous contrasts depending on how much your subject’s face (e.g. jawline, cheekbone, etc.) allows you.
• Remember that while butterfly lighting is known to be used for professional beauty and fashion portraits, you are free to add fun and creativity to your shots.

Conclusion

Butterfly lighting is a glamorous portrait photography technique. To take butterfly lighting portraits, you can stay within your budget and your photography equipment does not need to be complicated and very professional.

It can, therefore, be a good start for beginners if they choose to take portraits using this technique. Moreover, the result is always stunning and you will be amazed looking at your work. Apart from the simplicity, you should also know that portrait photography has good potential when it comes to making money from photography.

The tips above can help you get better results when taking butterfly lighting portraits. Keep an eye on them, stay focused, and grab your camera to take your first portrait shot. Who knows – maybe that’s what you need to start selling on Instagram? Wish you the best of luck!

About Guest Author: Parichehr Parsi

Parichehr is an enthusiastic content creator. She currently writes for Nifty, which is a task management service provider. Being a travel addict and workaholic shows that she is quite well-balanced in living her one-time chance of life. She also loves music, reading, writing, and knitting.

The post How to Use Butterfly Lighting Technique for Taking Stunning Portraits appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Milk bath photography is one of the best themes that you can go for if you’re looking to create photos that appear cute, unearthly, or even bold and sensual. That’s why this is a popular choice for photographing babies, expecting moms, and even for fashion and boudoir shoots.

The best part of photographing with milk baths is how it allows you to draw the viewers’ attention solely to your subject. The white negative space lets you compose with the least distraction and ensure that you capture only what you want to portray.

Another great thing about milk bath photography is how easy it is to do and that too at the comfort of your own home. The results might give you a feeling that shooting milk bath photos is tough, but that’s totally not the case.

You just need to pay attention to a few basic things to be able to ace your milk bath photography session. Let’s see how you can create surreal photos with milk bath photography.

Milk Bath Photography: The Essentials

There are a few things that you need to prepare before you can start taking milk bath photos so that your session goes uninterrupted.

• Have the bathtub squeaky clean preferably a day prior to the shoot to ensure that no stains are visible in the photos
  
• In case you’re preparing for a maternity milk bath photography session, ensure proper ventilation as any sort of smell can easily trigger sickness in pregnant women
  
• If you don’t have one, get a step ladder that you can easily fit in the bathroom; this makes taking photos from above a whole lot easier
  
• Purchase some flowers (optional) and non-fat milk powder from the grocery store
  
• Keep extra towels handy and ask your subject to bring a fresh pair of clothing and undergarments as well

How to Take Milk Bath Photographs

1. Lighting

Lighting is the first thing you should consider when doing milk bath photography. Since you’ll need to work indoors in a very limited space, it really helps if there’s a window or a doorway closeby through which ample natural light can come in where the bathtub is.

In case there’s no sufficient natural light,  you will need to make use of flash with a light modifier such as a softbox.

If space is really an issue and you can’t use a modifier, be sure to turn the flash head up towards the ceiling. Doing so will soften the light significantly and help you in making flattering images.

2. Camera Settings for Milk Bath Photography

Milk bath photography is not very different from portrait photography. The camera settings that you’ll need for milk bath photography are thus not very different from what you can use for portrait photography.

• Aperture: Use a wider aperture setting (around f/1.8-f.2.8) to keep just the subject in focus
• ISO: Set the ISO to the lowest setting if the light is ample but feel free to raise it if you need to
• Shutter speed: If you’re using flash, set the shutter speed to the camera’s sync speed (usually 1/250s), otherwise, you can go slower as the subject won’t be moving

If you choose to work with the camera in semi-auto modes like aperture priority mode or shutter priority mode, be sure to set the camera’s exposure compensation to around +1. This will ensure that the whites will appear white.

To know more about exposure compensation, be sure to go through our guide to snow photography.

How to Make a Milk Bath

Thankfully, you don’t need to fill your entire tub with milk to make a milk bath. Start by filling your tub with warm water as if you’re going for a bath. Warm water is essential so that it can dissolve the milk better.

Then, slowly start pouring in the powdered milk while you gently stir the water with your hand to help with the mixing process. The answer to how much milk you should pour in really depends on the size of your tub and the volume of water.

As you’re gradually pouring the milk and stirring with your hand, notice when the mixture becomes milky enough to appear opaque. You shouldn’t be able to see the portion of your hand immersed in the bath. You can stop pouring additional milk once that happens.

Next, decorate the milk bath with flowers or even sliced fruit like lemon. Get rid of the flowers’ stem using scissors and place them gently on the bath you just prepared. If you want to create specific patterns using the flowers and/or the fruit, let your subject in the bath first.

5 Creative Ideas for Milk Bath Photography

1. Create a Frame Around Your Subject

When it comes to composition techniques in photography, creating a frame around your subject is one of the most effective techniques to draw the viewers’ attention towards them. You can use the same idea in milk bath photography as well.

Carefully place the flowers or fruit slices around the region of the subject where you want to emphasize and shoot vertically downwards to create a framing effect. You can even use a step-ladder to be able to compose your shot better.

2. Maintain Color Harmony

When deciding on the flowers, the dress, makeup, and any props that you’d want to use during the shoot, be sure to seriously consider the colors of every individual element.

Having colors that complement each other will make the image very soothing to look at. On the other hand, if the colors compete with each other for attention, that’ll surely make the image unflattering.

In fact, you can even try changing the color of the milk bath using food dye. If your subject is not comfortable working that way, you can easily change the color of the bath later with Colorcinch.

Step 1: Upload the image to Colorcinch.

Step 2: Navigate to Edit – Replace Color. You can then choose your target and destination colors.

Step 3: Using the Color Picker in the From option, click on the milk bath to grab its color. Then, using the Color Picker in the To option, choose your preferred color. This will instantly apply your preferred color to the milk bath.

You can use the Slider to adjust the Color Range and exclude unnecessary regions using the Erase option.

Here’s a before/after comparison of the changes that we made to the milk bath color.

3. Photograph Certain Body Parts in Isolation

While it is common to emphasize the subject’s face in milk bath photography, you provide an intimate look to your photos by photographing certain body parts of the subject in isolation.

For instance, if you’re doing baby milk bath photography, photograph just their cute little feet. Similarly, for maternity milk bath photography, you can emphasize the belly. You get the idea!

4. Use Leaves or Branches Instead of Flowers

A great way to give a unified and natural look to your milk bath images is to make use of green leaves or tree branches instead of flowers and fruit slices. This idea also works great for nature-inspired fashion and portrait shoots.

5. Try Different Perspectives

When shooting milk bath images, it is common to shoot from a higher perspective. But this can quickly appear boring and redundant. So, be sure to change your perspective to add excitement to your photos.

For instance, you can shoot from close to the water level for a feeling of greater intimacy. Or, if the space and shooting environment allows, get the entire bathtub in the frame for a classy shot. You can even shoot from the subject’s point of view for an interesting look.

To Sum It Up

Milk bath photography has a very versatile scope because of which it is popular amongst various types of photographers. Whether you shoot maternity portraits, fashion portraits, babies, or even editorial portraits, you can do it all on a milk bath.

The processes involved in shooting milk bath photos can get intimate. Hence, it requires that the photographer and the subject are on the same page during the shoot. So, be prepared to set clear-cut goals and have proper communication with the subject.

And if you’re just getting started with milk bath photography, remember that this does not have to get too expensive. You can even experiment with products using a bowl, or work with babies in an inflatable pool. Have fun!

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In this discussion, we’ll learn about portrait lighting. The key to any good portrait photography is a good understanding of lighting, portrait lighting techniques, and how different lighting ratios can impact the mood of your photos.

Sure, we can enhance the photos in post-processing, but it’s important to understand that post-processing is not an excuse for poorly lit or badly composed photos.

Introduction to Portrait Photography Lighting

Portrait lighting is all about lighting your subject in a tasteful way so that it brings out the best in that person in the form of an image. The camera simply captures the image, but the lighting does the trick.

Lighting is the key to any photography. It sets the mood of a photo. The way you position your lights, the angle from which you fire them, the lighting ratios you use, and the kind of light shaping tools you employ all contribute to how a photo will finally appear.

Posing also contributes to the final photo. But in this discussion, we’ll limit ourselves to the lighting bit. We’ll discuss poses for portrait photography some other time.

How Many Lights Are Required for Portrait Photography?

A single light is a bare minimum for portrait photography. With two you have a lot of room to experiment.

As we’ll learn in a moment, even a single light can be very versatile. A single light allows you to set up your shot in several different ways.

There are many different kinds of portrait lighting kits out there. We’ll discuss them some other time.

Different Types of Lighting Arrangements

Beginner photographers often ask,

“what is the best lighting for portrait photography?”

There is no one way to answer this. It all depends on what you want to achieve. If you want a high key result, you need to use a particular lighting setup along with multiple lights.

If you need a darker, more sinister-looking result, you need to light your subject in a specific way and use a fewer number of lights (usually one). So, it all depends on what your expectations are.

Next, we’ll discuss some of the more commonly used single-light portrait lighting setups. Then we’ll move on to the double light setups.

Single Light Arrangements

There are a bunch of single light setups you can use for your portrait works. These are all tried, and tested lighting arrangements used millions of times over by photographers worldwide.

1. Butterfly Lighting

Arguably, the second most popular lighting setup (loop lighting being the first), Butterfly lighting, can be easily identified by the presence of a small butterfly-shaped shadow under the nose of the subject being photographed.

To achieve this result, you need to place the light source directly above the subject’s head at a slightly tilted angle.

Butterfly lighting works the best when you can fill in the shadows under the chin with a reflector or a whiteboard.

How to Achieve:

2. Loop Lighting

One of the most famous portrait lighting techniques, the name Loop lighting comes from the tiny shadow that appears on the side of the nose (depending on the angle of the light) of the subject.

Loop lighting is a very easy-to-use lighting setup. All you need is to position your light to either the camera right or left and at a slight angle above the subject’s head.

How to Achieve:

Many of the single light setups discussed here can be tweaked to give a portrait a slightly moody feel. In the case of this demonstrative image, the subject’s background was slightly more exposed. Tweaking the Exposure sliders after uploading it to Colorcinch results in a fine-tuned image.

Here’s a quick before and after look.

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In this beginner’s guide to taking stunning black and white portraits, we will discuss everything you wanted to know about this genre.

There is a renewed interest among photographers to shoot black and white portraits. In a sense, photographers are trying to go back to the classical ways of photographers like Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Yousuf Karsh, and Martín Chambi, who made the black and white medium famous.

“Black and white portraits are about removing distraction caused by an overabundance of color in a composition, and instead focus on the composition, the texture, the face and the mood.”

An Introduction to Black and White Portraits

Some of you might be thinking, in a world that’s filled with colors, the mere discussion of black and white portraits is pointless. Why are we even talking about this medium when the world around us is colorful?

The reason is black and white photography has defined the art form ever since it came into existence. Right from the days when the Daguerreotype was discovered, right down to the 1960s when the color film became more of a common thing, black and white remained the soul medium of photographic expression.

We dare not say black and white is monochrome. Those are just two colors from the color pallet. When you choose to shoot in black and white, you eliminate all the other colors and focus on only two.

“This allows you to focus on certain aspects of photography like contrast, texture, tone, composition, and of course lighting, which are at times overshadowed by the overbearing presence of color.”

Black and white portrait photography tests a photographer’s skills in these areas of photography. Devoid of the option to use color in one’s composition, a photographer must focus on the other aspects. It’s a challenge and a test of the photographer’s skills.

Why Do People Use Black and White Portrait Photography?

There is this undoubtedly old-world charm about black and white portraits. If you look at albums from the 40s and 50s or even cinema made during the golden age of Hollywood, you will realize what we’re trying to imply here.

For those born after the 70s and 80s and living all their lives bombarded with color, black and white photography is an acquired taste. For those born before, it’s nostalgic.

Color is not essential for portrait photos. That’s if you know what portrait photography is in the true sense. Portrait photography is all about capturing the essence of the person facing the camera. Not just about the color of the clothes or the skin color.

One of the greatest photojournalists of modern times, Ted Grant, aptly summarizes this when he said,

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”

Moreover, color film was not discovered until the 1930s, when Eastman Kodak released color film stock, people were introduced to the magical world of possibilities. Until that time, and a couple of decades even after that, the world of photography only shot in black and white.

Color film stock was expensive, plus it wasn’t easy to get proper exposure using indoor lighting. These are the two main reasons color photography did not pick up until after the 1960s.

For those born in the 1950s and 60s, black and white images were the norm, and they continued to use them even after the color film came into existence.

In modern times black and white images are shot purely for aesthetic reasons and mimic the classic look.

How to Take Black and White Portraits?

There are two ways to shoot black and white photos. You can shoot it in black and white in-camera, which saves you the trouble to post-process and fine-tune your images. But that can also be a problem because your options as a photographer are limited. After all, you’re making a conscious effort to discard all other colors.

To do this in-camera, switch the Picture Style on your camera to Monochrome. Under the Menu, there would be an option called Picture Style.

Choosing Monochrome sets your camera to shoot in Monochrome.

Once you do that, you should be able to adjust and fine-tune the effects, Sharpness, Contrast, Filter Effects, etc., to ensure that the results are according to your taste.

The steps will differ from camera make and model, so please check your camera manual to verify.

The other option is to shoot in color and then post-process the files later to produce black and white photos. And it’s pretty simple to do as well. We’ll demonstrate this using this example –

We will use this image to demonstrate how you can convert your photo to black and white using Colorcinch.

Open the image using the Upload button.

The tool that you need is located under the Color tab.

Now let’s click the Color tab and choose the Saturation slider.

Next, we’ll pull the Saturation slider to the left.

After that, Save it to preserve the changes.

Next, navigate to the Exposure slider.

We just made a few minor changes to the sliders.

Voila! Our image has magically transformed into black and white.

Another way to do it is to use filters. Here are the steps:

This image was originally in color. We upload this to Colorcinch.

Next, go straight to Filters.

Under Filters, there are a bunch of options. Go straight to Black & White.

It opens up another bunch of options.

We liked Option 5, and we can use this option to convert the image to Black & White.

Here’s a quick before and after look.

The Process of Taking a Black and White Portrait

The process is no different from one when you take a color image. Except, in this case, you have to focus more on the composition, the lighting, the texture, and the mood. You lose the ability to use color, so everything else that goes into making an image has to move up one notch to make up for it.

1. Work on the tonality

Since an image loses color, you must look for tonality to give it a dynamic look. Work on the dynamic range of your photos and play around with the brightest and the darkest bits.

2. Use a fast wide lens

A fast wide lens lets you play around with the depth of field. The shallow depth of field has its advantages. Such images look very appealing.

3. Shoot in Color and post-process

We recommend you shoot in color and then tweak it in a photo editor. This helps you have greater control over the tonality of the final image.

4. Don’t be afraid to push the ISO

A feature of your camera that most photographers would recommend you not to push is the ISO. But black and white portrait photography is one area where you can without any drawbacks. The resultant noise looks pretty good.

5. Work on the pose

Black and white images work the best when the facial expressions are just right. Also, the facial features are a great indicator of what pose should be perfect for the best shot. So, work on the pose and expression and take as many shots as you can.

Concluding Thoughts

Black and white portraits is a difficult genre to master. It requires reasonable control over tonality, contrast, composition, and lighting to set up the mood and capture an image that’s, in essence, representative of the photographed person.

But it’s a technique that has remained in vogue for as long as photography has been around. Black and white portrait photographers often use this technique to produce stunningly beautiful portraitures that capture the subject’s soul that’s impossible to achieve using color.

Hopefully, we have been able to interest you enough to start experimenting independently. The techniques explained in this guide are not exhaustive. We hope you will find methods that work the best for you as you develop your skills.

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Shallow depth of field is a photography technique that blurs the background and foreground, creating a sense of focus on the subject. When you have a shallow depth of field (DoF), it means that you have a limited range of focus.

Many of you would be familiar with shallow depth of field photography examples like the photo above.

You can achieve this by using a long lens or physically moving closer to your subject and, most importantly, using a wide-open aperture. The latest improvements in smartphone software algorithms allow this effect to be achieved in smartphones as well.

Introduction to Shallow Depth of Field

Shallow depth of field is a photography technique that blurs the background and foreground of a photo to focus on the subject. This technique is often used in portrait and macro photography to create a sense of intimacy and immediacy.

Sometimes, the technique is used to blur out elements in the frame that do not add to the overall composition.

For example, there may be distracting elements directly behind the subject – like telegraph posts or boxes or anything that does not add value to a composition. Shallow DoF is used to ensure that such elements are blurred out and not visible in the final image.

How to Achieve This Effect?

The technique of shallow DoF can be achieved using a combination of a focal length and amount of space in the background and foreground of the subject. Either one of the above combinations will give you a shallow DoF and with it, a good amount of background (and foreground) blur. But the best technique to produce this effect is by using a small f-stop (discussed below).

Let’s discuss a few scenarios –

1. Use a Wide-Angle Lens and Move-in Close

You can create a shallow DoF using a wide-angle lens. With a wide-angle lens, you are required to step in closer and therefore reduce the distance between the subject and the camera. But as long as you remember to leave out sufficient space between the subject and the background you can achieve the shallow DoF effect without any trouble.

I know many of you would be thinking –

Can I just choose the right lens and camera and let the equipment do the rest?

Well, to an extent you can. For example, if you shoot with a full-frame camera and a medium telephoto lens that has a small f-stop it’s easy to capture this effect without much effort.

2. Use a Long Lens and Leave Space Behind the Subject

That brings us to the second scenario. To try this technique, you can place a subject about 20 feet away from the background. Now, use a long lens to shoot. The lens doesn’t need to have a small f-stop/ large working aperture. A lens even with a large f-stop will work.

As you focus on the subject you will notice that everything in the background appears to be out of focus. If there are trees in the background, they will appear blurred and silky smooth.

You will also notice that anything in the background appears larger than usual. It will appear as if the background is being sucked in. The longer the focal length the greater is this effect. The effect is exaggerated when using a telephoto zoom lens.

3. Use a Long Lens With a Small F-Stop (Or Large Aperture)

The most effective way to achieve shallow depth of field, however, is to use a long lens that has a wide-open aperture, or a small f-stop. With a wide-open aperture/ small f-stop such as f/1.4 to f/4, the lens diaphragm opens up wide enough to allow a lot of light in along with giving you that beautiful blurry effect.

Long lenses like the 70-200mm zoom, the 105mm, and the 135mm prime are great lenses to achieve background blur. This is because these lenses usually have a small f-stop. With a small f-stop or wide-open aperture, even if you leave out only a little space behind the subject, you can still achieve the effect. Lenses with a small f-stop naturally produce a shallow depth of field, depending on your composition and where you’re focusing in the frame.

4. Best Shallow Depth of Field Settings

The only setting that you need to tweak is the aperture. Use the largest aperture or the smallest f-stop that your lens can open to. The choice of lens will determine whether you have to move in close or shoot from a distance.

Retouching Your Shallow DoF Photos

Whether or not you’re using a big aperture, it’s useful if you could do some light retouching of the photos. Ideally, a darker background accentuates the effect of a shallow depth of field. That said it’s not always necessary.

Sometimes, even a brighter background can work as long as there are some textures in the frame, and it’s blurred out. Avoid a solid background because that never works with this technique.

Let’s take an example.

Let’s open an image in Colorcinch using the Upload button.

We intend to work primarily on the Exposure tab because that will allow us to slightly exaggerate the effects of shallow DoF.

Next, let’s tweak each of the sliders under the Exposure tab.

Finally, we need to pull down the Brightness just to make the image a bit darker.

Again, Highlights was pushed down a bit under the same logic.

The Contrast was pushed just a little to make the green a bit more vibrant and stand out against the yellow.

Finally, the Shadow was pushed to ensure that the final result is more to our liking.

Note we don’t want the green to disappear into the black. That’s not our intention. We just want to keep the green but take away the details.

All these took me less than 10 seconds.

Uses of Shallow Depth of Field Effect

The best use of this effect is in portrait and macro photography. It can also be used for shooting small products and for creative photography.

Portrait photography is perhaps the one genre where you can see this effect used more often. Portrait photography, especially when it’s shot outdoors often has a distracting background. It becomes necessary to use a shallow DoF to eliminate those from the composition.

But to be honest these days photographers use the effect simply because shallow depth of field photos look cool. And I agree.

When shooting macro photos, the effect is somewhat unintentional. When you shoot a small subject from a very close distance, invariably one of the basic parameters of shallow depth of field is fulfilled – leave out space between the subject and the background.

Concluding Thoughts

Shallow depth of field is a creative technique that’s mostly used in portraitures and macro photography. But that does not sum it up. There are many creative possibilities of this technique and you’re only limited by your imagination.

So, feel free to experiment with this technique. I am sure you will find out more avenues where this technique can be useful.

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