Aperture: How to Achieve a Blurry Background in Photography

How do you achieve a blur­ry back­ground in pho­tog­ra­phy? Aper­ture. I have been doing my best to have my cam­era in my hands for least 15 min­utes a day… ask my stu­dents, that’s my mantra, espe­cial­ly in my Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials program. 

I’ve come to real­ize that it’s real­ly not that easy to do, and I’ve real­ized that with­out struc­ture, it’s even more dif­fi­cult! So, how am I mak­ing it happen? 

Every time I go for a walk, I take my cam­era and on those walks, I have been play­ing with the aper­ture in my pho­tog­ra­phy! You know, that thing that makes a blur­ry back­ground in pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s not dif­fi­cult at all and is more about your lens than your cam­era, it’s all about using the cor­rect aperture. 

I believe that aper­ture is where pho­to­graph­ic mag­ic hap­pens. It adds dimen­sion and light to your pho­to­graph, it is what allows you to achieve a blur­ry back­ground effect.

What is Aperture?

If you think about your cam­era in terms of an eye, the aper­ture is like the pupil. Aper­ture is the hole in which light enters the cam­era. The lens on your cam­era will deter­mine the aper­ture range that you can shoot. 

When look­ing in your cam­era, you see an “f” and then a num­ber. This “f” and num­ber is telling you your aper­ture. The low­er the num­ber, the big­ger the hole, the more light that comes in, result­ing in only a small por­tion of your pho­to being in focus. This helps you achieve those pic­tures with the blur­ry back­ground. Shoot­ing a larg­er aperture—F1.8–2.5 means more light will come into the cam­era, and there will be less focus in your photo. 

Shoot­ing a low­er aper­ture-F16-22 means less light will come in and more focus. This is often con­fus­ing to pho­tog­ra­phers just start­ing out in man­u­al. Keep in mind that the small­er the num­ber, the big­ger the hole. When I say “wide open,” I mean to shoot at a 1.4–2.8.  

What aperture do I use to create a blurry background in photography? A crisp background?

So, when do I use what you may ask? I tend to set my aper­ture based on what I am shoot­ing. If I am shoot­ing one sub­ject and I want that beau­ti­ful, but­tery, blur behind the sub­ject, I will shoot wide open, mean­ing an f1.8‑f2.5. I focus on the sub­ject that I want to be clear and in focus, I make sure there is a bit of dis­tance between my sub­ject and the back­ground, and the lens cre­ates that soft but­tery background. 

Shoot­ing “wide open” can be incred­i­bly for­giv­ing as you don’t see a lot of what’s hap­pen­ing in the back­ground… it’s the per­fect way to shoot when you are all home togeth­er, and you want the focus to be iso­lat­ed on one thing and not say, on the mess in your kitchen, the laun­dry on your couch or the tele­vi­sion that’s on in the background…oh sor­ry, maybe that’s just my house! 

I shoot at a more nar­row aper­ture when I am shoot­ing land­scapes and want every­thing to be crisp and clear.  Or if I am on a vaca­tion and I want every detail of a build­ing or mon­u­ment to be in focus. A nar­row aper­ture is per­fect for pho­tograph­ing a larg­er group of people. 

Tips for what aperture to use!

When to use a “wide open” aper­ture:

• Use to cre­ate a shal­low depth of field or a blur­ry back­ground.  If you want to take a pic­ture of a flower and want the back­ground blurred.  A pho­to of a baby’s feet and you want the rest out of focus.

When to use a “more nar­row” aperture: 

• Use to cre­ate a greater depth of field or a crisp back­ground.
• For land­scape pho­tos where you want every­thing in crisp focus or a large group of peo­ple. When pho­tograph­ing peo­ple, I tend to shoot the num­ber aper­ture for the num­ber of peo­ple I am photographing. 
• Gen­er­al rule of thumb is shoot aper­ture around the num­ber of peo­ple you are photographing. 
  • Sin­gle sub­ject F1.8–3.5
  • Two sub­jects F2.8–4.5
  • Groups F5.6‑F16
• Safe rule=Shoot F3-F4 when start­ing out

So now I want you to grab that cam­era, find a sub­ject, and work on cre­at­ing your own amaz­ing back­grounds, and don’t for­get to join the pho­tog­ra­phy con­test on my Face­book group for your chance to win a FREE online pho­to class!

Feel free to mes­sage me your shots or questions!

Hope you are all hap­py and healthy,

Dena

---

Learn how to use man­u­al mode and take con­trol of your cam­era so that you can cre­ate the amaz­ing images that you’ve always imag­ined with the Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials pro­gram!