How to get this blur??

[JordanCournoyea]

This very popular photographer in my town has a very distinctive background blur and colouring to her photos. Does anyone know how she gets that blur or colour?

GIGI Photography

[WayneW]

Try a telephoto (or a zoom at 200mm or more) along with a wide aperture. Focus on your subject and the background will blur out. Of course, the further the background is from the subject, the more blurred it will be. Experiment, you'll see how it works. Read up on "depth of field". Photographers on model shoots use this all the time. You can take portraits blurring out really distracting backgrounds, using this method. Bryan F. Peterson shows this on his PPSOP website. Click on the video with the little old lady: Perfect Picture Video Tips and Tutorials
We've got it made today - Don't have to pay for film, developing and printing just to find out where you went wrong!
Wayne

[ceremus]

Looks to me to be a fairly straightforward shallow depth-of-field. A lot of the coloring and vibrancy of the photos come from editing and post-processing, but the basic blur is achieved from using lenses, settings, and positioning that allow for a short field where things are in focus, and things in front of and behind that field are out of focus (depth of field).

I can see from some of her exif data that she shoots with 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4 lenses, getting a shallow DoF from those lenses is fairly easily done.

Are you familiar at all with the terminology? What the f number stands for? Focal length? Aperture?

[JordanCournoyea]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I should have prefaced my post with some info about myself. I am very well versed in photography theory and terms. I am well aware of DOF and how to achieve such effects. I think if you examine these photos closer you will see that the blur she achieves is not SOOC. While you can get some great DOF using a wide open aperture or a telephoto lens, this particular blur has a certain look to it that screams of post-processing. SOOC blur is very smooth, where as a lot of her pictures have a very textured look. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

[ceremus]

I suppose you can't completely discount photoshop actions with layer masking and what have you, but in many of her shots she's shooting an 85mm f/1.4 either wide open or a 3rd stop down. Given that, her shots aren't striking me as particularly out of the ordinary...

[JordanCournoyea]

I'll be a little more specific. If you look at this picture here: http://gigiphotography.com/blog/wp-c...9/DSC_4456.jpg

Look at the top 1/3 of the shot. It has a very textured, pastel-like look. Definitely not SOOC.

[johnske]

Originally Posted by JordanCournoyea

I'll be a little more specific. If you look at this picture here: http://gigiphotography.com/blog/wp-c...9/DSC_4456.jpg

Look at the top 1/3 of the shot. It has a very textured, pastel-like look. Definitely not SOOC.

??? Nothing unusual there, shot with 50mm f/1.6 lens to give a fairly narrow DOF and including some foreground and background to give a three dimensional feel. A tad overexposed and there are some blownout parts of the background that add a little bokeh, but nothing really unusual... (I think the bokeh is what you're calling 'textured')

[JordanCournoyea]

Well I guess in the millions of photos I have looked at in my lifetime I have never seen this type of DOF SOOC. I would be very interested in seeing someone try to recreate this, unfortunately I don't have a lens with a wide enough aperture. I'm not necessarily discounting your opinion that it is SOOC, but it would be easier to believe if I could see this in another photo.

[RLucas]

The example photo looks like a standard dof shot to me. The leaves in the foreground are closer than the minimum focus distance. The child is the primary focus, and the background is outside the other end of the depth of field. Pretty straightforward IMO.

[WayneW]

Hi Ceremus-
Where can I find her exif data?
Thanks, Wayne