Portrait photography: four steps to create a blurred background

You can create a blurred background in your portrait photography with a very simple process.

When you're photographing people, a soft-focus background can help eliminate potential distractions from your photo. This effect is called a shallow depth of field.

With a shallow depth of field, only the face or person would be in focus, and the background would gradually become blurred. In a longer depth of field, your subject and everything in the background is clearly in focus.

Here are the four ingredients to consider when creating a dramatically shallow depth of field:

Wide opening. One of the first lessons in exposure manipulation is that the size of your shutter controls your depth of field. The larger the shutter aperture is for each shot, the smaller the amount of your focused photo will be. Choose lower numbers, such as f4 - f2, for the most dramatic effect. Remember that opening f-stop numbers work in reverse; The lower numbers represent the larger openings.

Distance to your subject. Getting close to your subject is an excellent composition principle anyway, but it's even more important when you want to remove your zoom background images. If you are within 10 feet of your subject, it is much easier to create a shallow depth of field than if you are within 50 feet of your subject.

The amount of zoom: When you zoom in, you compress the elements of your photo, so everything behind the subject becomes more dramatic. A wide-angle lens may not create a shallow depth of field, but if you zoom in on a 100mm to 200mm telephoto lens, the results will be much more dramatic.

Size of your sensor: The size of your sensor will affect the final quality of your image in many ways. Making your background blur is just one of them.

Do not attempt to obtain a shallow depth of field with a camera phone. The sensor is so small that you won't see much of an effect. With a compact camera (point and shoot), depth of field can be manipulated, but it is difficult. With a DSLR, you can start to see really dramatic effects because the sensor is so much bigger. Use a full-frame digital sensor camera, and the results will be incredible.

Blurring the background is one of many composition techniques you can use to create great portrait shots. With four easy ingredients, you could be on your way to taking outstanding photos.