Photo Tips – Focus

01 November 2011

Photo Tips – Focus: it’s all about focus

Sunbeams

Photography is all about focus. I have probably upset all the lighting guru’s, monochrome and saturation proponents and they have probably headed elsewhere by now. However, whatever style of photography interests you – whether it be portrait, documentary, macro, architecture, underwater, wildlife or landscape – focus is still central to the whole endeavour.

Taking good photographs requires a focussed mind. There is often a whole range of elements in a situation that grab your attention: colour, shape, lighting, shadows, movement, drama, and the list goes on.
Mountains, dam, grass

The challenge is to capture the essence of the situation in a moment on a two-dimensional medium. Even beginning to do that requires focus. The questions to ask yourself are, “What are the key things that grabbed my attention? What cannot be left out of the photo? What is the one thing that is absolutely crucial to convey this moment?”

In different styles of photography the focus is different. It may be the eyes in a portrait, the water droplets in a macro, the lone tree on a hillside in a landscape, but there is a point of focus. Taking time to think about the main point of focus is important in photography.
To me it is the point of difference between a snapshot and a photograph.

Hooded Plover

So next time you go to take a photo, think about the focus, the heart and soul of the scene, the person, the situation before you.
Find the focus, capture that as the main point and you have a photograph instead of a snapshot.



Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this photo tip, if you did feel free to share it, leave a comment, and to come back for more ideas on how to improve your photography.