Looks like the Random Weekly Photo Experiment has run its course as submissions are starting to become few and far between. Looks like I need to start thinking about what it is I’m going to post on Mondays next year.

Here are the submissions for SHADOWS:

Mike Vest

Christopher D. Bennett

The theme for next week:

DEPTH OF FIELD

A look back at last year’s DEPTH OF FIELD submissions:

DEPTH OF FIELD – 2010

Forgot what DEPTH OF FIELD is? Here is a refresher:

Depth of field (DOF) is the portion of a scene that appears acceptably sharp in the image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.

Depth of Field is controlled by the size of the aperture used to take a picture. The larger the aperture, the smaller the Depth of Field. The smaller the aperture, the larger the Depth of Field. If you want only one item in a picture to be in focus, then you use a large aperture. If you want almost the whole picture to be in focus, then you use a small aperture.

One thing to note about aperture sizes, the larger the number, the smaller the aperture. f/1.4 is much larger than f/32.

Perhaps you don’t know how to control the size of the aperture on your camera. You can still fake it. Almost all cameras have “Creative Control” settings. If you set your camera on “Portrait”, almost always symbolized by a sideways icon of a woman’s face, then the camera will use exposure settings with the largest aperture possible. If you set your camera to “Landscape” almost always symbolized by a mountain icon, the camera will use exposure settings with the smallest aperture possible.

DEPTH OF FIELD is usually meant to describe a picture taken with a large aperture to separate the subject of a picture from its background.

Remember: Submissions are due to bennett@photography139.com by noon on Monday.

I’d say good luck, but it would seem somewhat pointless.