Early DOF

[Mr_Mackee]

Critique my early DOF attempt. Too wide? Too Narrow? Too confusing?

[Ewie]

Hi Mr_Mackee

I'm guessing that you were experimenting with your technique in this shot? I say that because I'm not sure what the subject is supposed to be. Sure the "stringy bits" hanging in the foreground are sharp and there is a nice DOF back to the woodpile, but what are you trying to say with this shot?

DOF (to me) is one ingredient of the recipie that makes a good shot. Others being composition, light etc etc but without a subject you have little to work with. A bit like making Pavlova without eggs

Now in the interests of experimentation, this shot would look better IMO with the woodpile as the main subject in focus, perhaps from another angle to cut out the clutter on the ground in front of the wood, with a wide aperture so that the foreground and background blur slightly. But that's just me, others within the forum may make different observations.

Practise make perfect

[stockphotojourney]

For me the moss does not command enough visual presence so when I look at the picture I just see out of focus logs. I had to got hunting for what was actually in focus and I only did that because of the title of the post. If you had less DOF and threw the logs WAY out of focus then it would probably work but since I can tell there are logs back there it does not work.

[wulf]

It gets the basic concept of narrow DoF but I don't think the moss is a strong enough subject to pull it off. If you were closer to the moss, making more of its details, and perhaps at an angle where the blurred woodpile filled the whole background, I think the result would be more effective.

Wulf