Eye-Catching Candids with your SLR Camera

My one major regret in life is not knowing how to take quality candid photographs of my daughter Lucy when she was a baby. Although I have beautiful professional portraits, I am missing top quality snapshots documenting the everyday moments of our life together. The pictures that make a flood of memories come back each time you see them. The ones that show how angelic she looked as the sun streamed in on her crib first thing in the morning, or the way she would sit for hours admiring the petals on our spring tulips. These are the pictures I want, not the ones I have of her eating her first solid food with piles of laundry in the background.

With an SLR (single lens reflex) camera it is easier than you would think to take breathtaking candid photographs just by simply changing the aperture on your camera.

What is aperture?
Aperture is the control on your camera that along with shutter speed, determines how much light is allowed into the camera to expose the film. Aperture is often referred to as an f-stop. Aperture also controls the depth of field.

What is depth of field?
Depth of field is a term used to describe how in focus the nearest and farthest object in a photograph will be. If you use a small depth of field only the objects that your camera is focusing on will have a sharp focus. If you use a large depth of field, not only will the objects that your camera is focusing on will be sharp, but so will the items surrounding it.

How do I change my depth of field?
To change the depth of field in your photographs, you need to change the aperture setting on your camera. By setting your camera to a small aperture, f-2.5 to f-5.6, only the objects nearest to the areas in which your camera is focused on will be in focus. This allows your subject to be in focus and the items behind it to be blurred.

Case Study

Photograph One - Aperture setting f-4.5

Notice how the items behind my daughter get blurrier the farther away they are from my point of focus, my daughter. Even the bars that she is leaning against are slightly out of focus. As you look further into the background the items become unrecognizable. This allows my main image, my daughter, to appear as if she is popping out of the photograph. It immediately makes her the center of attention and provides dimension to my picture.

Photograph Two - Aperture f-16.

To create this photograph I used a larger f-stop. This allowed more of my background to be in focus. Notice how you can recognize more of the items in the background, and the attention is not solely focused on my daughter.

Photographer's Tip

The more that I experiment with aperture settings; I have come to realize that the photographs that I am the happiest with in the end are the ones that utilized a small f-stop. My camera is now always set to the AV mode, or aperture priority mode. This allows me to set my own aperture while the camera automatically selects the correct shutter speed for the lighting conditions.

Photographer's Warning

Be careful when shooting more than one person with a small aperture. If each person does not have their face aligned to the same point, the person whose face you focus your camera on will be more in focus than the others.

Refer to your camera's manual for further instruction on how to change the aperture setting on your camera.