Shoot Outdoor Portraits Shallow

SCOTT KELBY

If you’re shooting a portrait outdoors, for a more professional look, you want to direct the attention to your subject, minimize distracting backgrounds, and you want to put some visual separation between your subject and the background. The easiest way to do all of this is by creating a shallow depth of field. To do that, switch your digital camera to aperture priority mode, and then set your camera’s f-stop to either the lowest or next-to-lowest f-stop you can. (So, if the lowest number you can go is f/2.8, you’d use f/2.8 or the next highest number, f/3.5.) Using these low numbers throws the background out of focus, which puts all the focus on your subject. This out-of-focus background look is a very popular technique used by portrait professionals when shooting outdoor portraits.