The F2.8 challenge

Should we be shooting more landscapes with a shallow depth of field?

Hello, I’m Gill and I write a photography blog inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and beyond. Please subscribe to read more of my writing and visit my website to view my images

As a landscape photographer I have spent a lot of time over the years shooting at apertures around F11, looking to achieve the optimum sharpness across the frame. My compositions often make use of prominent foregrounds and I have to be mindful of how these relate to the other elements in the frame. Sharpness throughout the image is a key consideration and by shooting with a short focal length and an aperture of around F11 this is usually achievable in a single shot without the use of hyperlocal calculations or other technicalities.

For the most part, it seems that in landscape photography, the usual aesthetic is sharpness from front to back - a goal that is discussed in many books and on many YouTube tutorials. I have said it myself on workshops many times, but maybe it is not as important as we think. What creative possibilities would open up if instead of using F11 we used an aperture of F2.8?

This was the challenge I posed recently on a group photo walk. I asked all the participants to set their cameras to the widest aperture and use this for all the images they made on the walk. The idea was to think creatively about compositions and try to use a shallow depth of field for both landscape and detail shots.

I selected a location I had been to many times before and one that offered a huge variety in subject matter. Everyone had brought different lenses with them, some had fixed focal length 50mm lenses with 1.8 apertures while others had shorter zooms. For the challenge I used my 70-200mm F2.8 lens.

As with any challenge I found it took a while to get my eye in and shooting landscapes wide open required a whole different mind set. As the depth of field was so shallow I had to really think about my subject and how this related to the rest of the scene. What part of the image did I want to be sharp, could I frame this with some out of focus areas and was the background still recognisable? In other words did the image still make sense when so much of it was out of focus?

I began with some obvious detail shots using low viewpoints to add some interest. This image was taken at F2.8 at 170mm with a shutter speed of 1/4000. Because I was so close to the foreground and my background was so far away the boats in the distance are almost unrecognisable and this shot has become about the subject only.

I then changed direction and took the same subject but this time with a background that was much closer. I chose some dinghies to compliment the ropes and cleat on the pontoon. Now the background is more defined and the foreground has some context to it and I think this shot is more interesting because of its composition. This time the focal length was 140mm, the aperture F2.8 and the shutter speed 1/4000. I also chose a higher viewpoint to ensure the cleat interacted well with the plain part of the background and wasn’t lost in the detail higher up.

For the next shot I focused on a boat that was a little further away and this became the foreground subject with the background blurred out but still recognisable.

I also experimented with another boat a similar distance away, but with a foreground rope leading to it. Again I focused on the boat and the rope has become a block of colour in the bottom of the frame. Although it’s not that recognisable I quite like the abstract nature of the foreground and think it compliments the boat quite nicely.

The first series of shots were taken with the subjects in close proximity and all but the last shot with the focus on the foreground. I then decided to turn my attention to a subject much further away. This time I shot through the foreground grasses so they have become a blurred block of colour in the bottom of the frame. I have focused on the yellow boat and the background, which is closer to the boat than my camera, is much better defined. The focal length for this shot was 200mm, the aperture F2.8 and the shutter speed 1/3200.

Next I experimented with some framing techniques and tried to create some interesting relationships between the elements within my frame. In the composition below I shot through an open doorway of an abandoned boat towards the wreck in the distance. I quite like the image but I am not sure it works well with my 70-200mm lens which has compressed the middle ground quite considerably and removed the feeling of depth within the image. So whilst I like the colour combinations and subject matter the image feels a little flat and two dimensional to me.

I found shooting smaller more intimate scenes much easier. I love taking detail shots with a shallow depth of field so that only part of the image is sharp. I think this adds to the ambiguity and creates some mystery and interest within the frame, particularly when the subject is not easily recognisable.

For my first shot I focused on the local plants and enjoyed the challenge of isolating a subject using blur alone, as there were no obvious colour differences available.

I then found some flowers that I could contrast with an orange dinghy in the background and spent some time working on a composition based around the colour combinations available to me.

Finally back at the old boats I shot some details in the decaying wrecks and loved how the peeling paint and blurred effect has isolated this nail amongst a beautifully soft colour palette.

Take away points from the challenge

1. Shooting wide open is a really interesting exercise and one that definitely made me look at the landscape differently. I think areas of blur in an image can help add mood and atmosphere and sometimes a shallow depth of field is a good alternative to pin sharp focus from front to back. With the landscape shots I probably would have got a more interesting effect if I had shot at an aperture of F5.6 but I felt the exercise was a good learning experience.

2. Because only a very small part of the image will be in focus it is important to make sure it is the ‘right’ part. It needs to grab the viewers attention and draw the eye into the image.

3. The sharp area can be anywhere in the frame so experiment to see what works best. Blur can be used as a frame in the foreground or as an abstract background and either way can help create some lovely mood.

4. Shooting with different lenses will have a huge effect on the amount and type of blur that you can achieve. My 70-200mm gave me a very shallow depth of field with large amounts of blurring especially at 200mm, if I had been using my 50mm F1.8 lens the effect would have been much reduced. Pick the lens and the aperture for the effect you are trying to achieve.

5. Think creatively. This is a fun challenge and I guarantee it will make you think differently about your compositions and what is possible. Pin sharp images from front to back are always going to be what we aspire to as landscape photographers but sometimes trying something a little more creative and with a little more focus can be more appealing and can achieve some interesting results.

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What do you think? Do you use wide apertures for your landscape images and do you think this way of shooting adds or detracts from the art of landscape photography? I would love to hear your thoughts so please leave your comments below.

Thank you very much for reading and until next week enjoy your photography.

Gill

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