Here we see Sakura before her meal.

And here she is after!

Well, maybe it didn’t happen quite like that.

But the effect can be powerful when shown to someone unfamiliar with the technique.

The first photograph is a macro photograph, with a high focal length. (Um, did this mean the camera was zoomed and the figure farther, or the figure was closer with no zooming? I have forgotten…) The macro mode creates a blurry background, while keeping the subject in focus.

The second photograph is a typical snapshot.

Even taking a close-up macro photographs of a small figure can fascinate someone when they see the small figure held beside the large photograph on a computer monitor.

Are the shadows over Sakura’s eyes too dark in these photographs? I must pay more attention, and find ways to decrease the amount of dark shadow over a character’s face. I’ll keep photographing, and I’ll continue to learn more!

Aperture	Focal Length	Result
f/5.14	17 mm
f/3.91	11.5 mm
f/2.67	6 mm

Is little Ana Coppola growing taller? Or is everything shrinking around her? Ana and the items in the background haven’t moved a millimeter. Only the camera has moved!

In my prior posting, I tried to understand camera terminology. Now it is time for me to apply them. As the aperture and focal length become smaller numbers, the subject remains the same size (due to moving the camera while zooming to maintain the same size of subject), and the background becomes smaller, wider.

Practically, the higher the focal length, the bigger the background is. The higher the focal length, the more magnified the background is, but the foreground stays the same. How does the camera do this? It must be magic.

I wrote about aperture, … a lower number [aperture] means a narrower depth of field, which leads to a blurry background and [a] close foreground …. However, the background in f/5.14 looks more blurry to me than the background in f/2.67. I will continue to take photographs where I can compare the aperture, so I can better understand how to control blurring the background when I want to.

Maybe that’s confusing to say. I’ll let my photos do the talking for me.

Consider three figures. Chika, the black-haired girl in the background, plays the part of the background subject. Typically this will be something large and distant. It may be a moutain, or the Statue of Liberty. In the middle is Ana, the blond-haired girl. She plays the part of the main subject. This is typically a person, but may be an object. The bleached-orange-haired girl, Miu, acts as the photographer.

During these photos, the positions between Ana (the main subject) and Chika (the background subject) will not change. Only two factors will change from one set of photos to the next: 1) The position of Miu (the photographer) relative to Ana (the main subject), and 2) the camera’s zoom.

Miu standing closer to Ana	Miu standing midway distance	Miu standing farther from Ana
N/A

As Miu (the photographer) moves further away from Ana (the subject), it appears that Chika (the background subject) becomes bigger! She becomes bigger because of zooming, but the visual position between Miu and Ana is mostly sustained. Even though Miu is moving the same distance from Chika as she is Ana, Chika is already farther away to begin with, and zooming appears to have a bigger effect for her. Or is this just a trick to my eyes?

I need to try this again with an actual large background image. I believe I can create a more noticeable effect this way.

By the way, here is Miu playing with a video camera, and zooming in on a car. How will she ever avoid the very distant zoomed-in-close oncoming vehicle?

I will continue to experiment with distances.