Brief
Find a subject in front of a background with depth. Take a close viewpoint and zoom in; you’ll need to be aware of the minimum focusing distance of your lens. Focus on the subject and take a single shot. Then, without changing the focal length, set the focus to infinity and take a second shot.
I took these two images on a visit to a National Trust property undergoing restoration. The work area was surrounded by fencing and I used the fencing as the foreground for my focus.
I do not find these images particularly helpful in this exercise. The fencing in made of very narrow wire and once out of focus, becomes so indistinct as to be more like artefact or noise in the image, rather than contributing to the image itself. As a result of this the images do not help me consider the rest of the brief:
As you review the two shots, how does the point of focus structure the composition? With a shallow depth of field the point of focus naturally draws the eye, which goes first of all to the part of the image that’s sharp. It generally feels more comfortable if the point of focus is in the foreground, although there’s nothing wrong with placing the point of focus in the background.
This is a work in progress and I think I will need to find other subject matter for this exercise.
Andrew Procter 