Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
These chipper little chirpers bring a little joy to the long winter, but now seem more plentiful and active. I have been able to get closer to them as well.
Interesting fact: The chick-a-dee-dee-dee song is used to maintain contact and keep the flock together.
Shallow Depth of Field
This Chickadee was close enough for me to use a shallow depth of field. Depth of field (DOF) is the area that is in focus in an image. In the case of this photo, it is very shallow in that the chickadee is in focus, but not much else is, only a few inches of the branch he’s standing on is in focus. The DOF is determined by the size of the aperture, the focal length and the distance to the subject. In this case I was able to push all three meters toward a shallow DOF. I used a 300mm focal length lens set to f/5.6 and was about 10 feet from the subject.
The shallow DOF is the playground of the rich. Large aperture lenses are very expensive — go look up f/2.8 or f/1.8 lenses and you will see. The longer the focal length, the more expensive the bigger apertures. The one meter not affected by price is the distance to the subject. If you can focus close-up on something, you can get the shallow DOF effect with any lens. But if you want to get this effect on live wild birds, you need the big glass.
Tomorrow: The Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias
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Love these little ‘Dees, the most friendly bird around. I’ve sat many a times on the deck at my north metro suburban home near my bird station with a refreshing adult beverage with seeds on my lap. The little buggers land pick seed then fly off. Sometimes if your still enough, they will simply perch on you looking you in the eye as if to say, “hello”.
But, each time I get my camera out, they flit around. These hyper little speed machines are too quick for me to capture. Love you DOF here. Proof that I need that 70-300 zoom.