During the first week we discussed many subjects, such as camera type, lens type and camera accessories. We also looked at various books and media to assist with learning. We learnt about minimum focus distance of lenses and how to quickly adjust the exposure compensation on our cameras. We were then asked to practice taking pictures without using the zoom function and additionally to practice taking a few portrait images trying to incorporate a shallow depth of field with background blur into the image.
Photography without zoom
I began this exercise by taking pictures of various scenes with my focal length zoomed out at 18mm on the 18-55 kit lens. I then framed the same scenes and objects with the lens zoomed in at 55mm so I could compare the effects of the different focal lengths. One thing that became apparent was how the perception of distance and size was affected. The closer I got to an object or scene whilst taking the photo, the larger the apparent distance between foreground and background objects became. I have demonstrated this below in the pictures I took of a small bridge in my local park.
Something else I noticed was how the lens had the tendency to distort objects when photographing at very short range with the focal length set to 18mm. This was particularly true for portrait photographs as you can see in the two close up images below.
Portrait images with background blur
I played around with altering background blur and depth of field by altering the size of the aperture. The following two images are examples of this:
For the next two images I opened the aperture up even further for an opening of F/1.8 on a 35mm prime lens. This caused the subject to be in focus and the background to be extremely blurred. I used my partner and my son as models for this, I understand that if this was for commercial reasons then they would have to sign model release forms (unit 01 2.9 & unit 02 1.6).
Mark Crowdy NCFE Level 1 Photography 
Unit 2 – 1.6
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