Fun With Focus-- Or Get Your Focus On!!

Once again, I dragged my camera around with me on a nice afternoon walk. While going through some of the results, I ran across these two examples, and the pedantic poohah floated out of me and made me write this post...

Another (perhaps obvious to many) good bit of advice to give someone taking pictures, is to be mindful of where your camera is focusing.

Even on automatic or program mode, your camera will "choose" where it focuses if you don't.

My camera has a focus square in the center of its field and a button I push half-way down to make the camera focus. I simply make the choice for where I want the camera to focus by aiming this square. When my camera 'beeps", I shift it quickly to where I want my composition and then "snap" my picture.

In the case of the twigs and water, to get the camera to not "see" the twigs and focus on the water, I aimed the square a t a spot without twigs, and then once focused, simply shifted the camera a little while still focused and snapped.

The sign and chain were much easier and more obvious. I can't tell you how you interpret the two pictures differently, but I can tell you that you do.

Oftentimes, pictures are more effective with a foreground AND a background. Having Wenzel in this last picture makes the ducks all in a row that much more interesting. Suddenly, they are ducks being menaced by an evil dog...