How do I get that creamy background?
Do you ever look at a photograph and wonder what makes it so so captivating? There are a lot of things that go into creating a great photo, such as light, composition and the photographer’s vision. Photography is art, after all. One thing that can make a portrait really pop is that creamy, blurred background—that beautiful bokeh that Apple so kindly helped us all achieve with portrait mode! HaHa! Here are a few ways you can achieve that look for yourself without your iPhone!
There are a few factors that determine how much of the background in an image will be blurred, namely wide aperture, longer focal length and and the distance your subject is from the background or the camera.
The blurred background is created using a shallow depth-of-field (DOF). DOF is defined as how much of an image is in focus. Professional photographers use a shallow DOF for portraits to get that look of the subject jumping off the background. The subject’s eyes and most of their face is in tack sharp focus, and the background immediately falls off into that dreamy bokeh. A shallow DOF also can hide distracting elements in the background. The above shot of my son was shot on the street beside my house with my neighbor’s garage in the background. Because of the shallow DOF, all those distracting elements are completely blurred away, and I was able to get a well-lit, beautiful portrait.
Another factor that comes into play is the focal length of your lens. The focal length is the distance from the lens to the camera’s sensor when the subject is in focus measured in millimeters). Lenses come in differing focal lengths, and can be a prime lens, which has a fixed focal length, or a zoom lens, which has a variable focal length. The longer the focal length, the more background blur you can get. For example, a portrait shot with a 50mm prime lens at 2.0 will have less blur than the same portrait shot in the same location with an 85mm prime lens at 2.0. The longer focal length will “compress” your portrait subject and create a shallow DOF.
Finally, another way to help create that blurred background is to move your subject farther away from your background, or get closer to your subject with your camera. For example, if you’re shooting a larger group you may need to use a shorter focal length (say a 24mm or 35mm lens) to be able to get everyone in the frame and in focus. If you can move your group farther away from your background, it will become more blurred and you can still get that shallow DOF look.
Conversely, if you’re shooting with a shorter focal length and you only have one or two subjects that you need to fit into the frame, you can move closer to your subjects with your camera and create that creamy look. This shot was taken with my camera close to the subject, and the subject relatively close to the background.
