Selective focusing with a wide aperture can add a lot of creativity to your images. You are telling the viewer where you want the focus of the image to be, and the meaning and story change depending on what is in focus. Using a telephoto lens can compress your background even more, decreasing the depth of field and making the background or foreground even blurrier. But take into consideration that just because your background or foreground is blurry, it doesn’t mean you can’t show detail in those areas (Figure 8.1).
If you wanted the entire image to be in focus, you would use a smaller aperture. Images with great depth of field, such as a landscape or an image with a lot of detail, direct the viewer to look at the entire scene (Figure 8.2).
BOKEH
The term “bokeh” (pronounced “boh-keh”) refers to the out-of-focus area in an image, or the aesthetic quality of the blur. Different lenses will result in different qualities of bokeh, and it is usually more visible in images with very shallow depth of field.
