Context again

I do like a picture to have context. This covers ground I have already covered in an earlier blog, but I think it is worth another visit. 

While walking around the village recently I saw a wall of blossom near the churchyard, and aimed my trusty 70-300 macro tele zoom at it. There is no problem in capturing the details of the flowers, but the question is, what to place in the background, and how far out of focus should it be?



In this case I wanted to emphasise the local context, and I chose to include a corner of the church in the shot. I wanted this out of focus so that it wouldn't distract from the flowers, but sufficiently in focus to be recognisable. This is where you need to find and use the depth of field preview function on your DSLR.



The same principles apply to this image as well, I am attempting to preserve the context while keeping the viewer concentrating on my subject. Composition, context, depth of field control. It's all art and science.

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