Read any introductory book on photography and you’ll more than likely be told of some rules to adhere to when taking pictures. I’ve written about some of these in the past, and more often than not adhere to them myself – for instance the rule of thirds is, generally, quite a good guideline for a pleasing composition. Sometimes however, as the saying goes, rules are made to be broken.
This image was taken a few months ago while enjoying a Sunday stroll in Monivea Woods. I’ve posted a couple of other photographs from that walk here in the past, including a photo of a bee that last weekend took up residence on the wall at home.
For the shot above, I was essentially taking a landscape photograph, and one of the basic tenets of photography would be to use a small aperture for landscapes, so as to give a large depth of field and keep as much of the scene in focus as possible.
I did quite the opposite on this occasion by using a large aperture and consequently throwing a large part of the scene out of focus.
My reasoning was that the area of the scene that interested me was the dappled light falling on the path, and keeping everything but that out of focus would help draw the viewer’s eye to it. This is also the reason why that in focus area of the path is 1/3 of the way into the frame – putting it in one of the sweet spots according the rule of thirds will naturally bring the viewer’s attention to it. Apparently.
Even though the trees and the path beyond are thrown out of focus there’s still enough detail to make out the figures walking along the path, which adds a little background interest to the shot also.
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