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Photography: You Asked, I’m Answering {Part 2}

Time for me to answer the rest of your photography questions! I hope you found my answers to Part 1 helpful. If you didn’t, I’m sorry, but you can’t say that I didn’t warn ya!

Question #6
How do you take a photo with a clear subject and blurry background?
That has to do with depth of field and aperture. A large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus, while a small depth of field means that part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be blurry. A large aperture (small number) will decrease your depth of field. A small aperture (large number) will increase your depth of field. Aperture is the size of the opening in the lens when a photo is taken. Aperture is measured in f-stops (f/16, f/8, f/4, etc.). This is a great post on aperture. I’ll admit that I don’t take advantage of aperture as much as I should (maybe that will be my New Year’s resolution). A lot of the time I’ll create the clear subject, blurry background shots by using auto-focus or manual focus on my DSLR.
Question #7
What’s your lighting source? What time of day do you take your shots? 
Many of my photos are taken on my entryway table in the afternoon because that’s where the best light is in our house (here, here, here, here, here). If I want to get a shot done in the morning I usually take the photo by our back door. I usually take “before” shots by our back door. (Our front door faces west and our back door faces east.)  Sometimes I’ll take photos in our dining area (here and here). Wherever I’m shooting, I open all of the blinds and turn on all of the lights.

Question #8
How do you set up a shot?
Depends on what kind of shot it is. I shoot most of my food shots on our entryway table. Typically, I put a white poster board against the wall on the entryway table so you can’t see our beige, textured wall. Sometimes I’ll use a piece of fabric or scarf to add color to the shot. You can kind of see how I set up my pumpkin chocolate chip whoopie pie photo below. I used painters tape to secure the scarf to the wall.





Question #9
Any easy editing tips?
I use Photoshop CS 5 for editing my photos so I can’t really delve into other editing programs. My usual editing involves decreasing shadows, sharpening the image, increasing vibrance and saturation, and using one (or more) of Pioneer Woman’s Photoshop actions and adjusting the action(s) accordingly. There are tons of Photoshop editing tutorials out there. You can find some tutorials on my Pinterest photography board.

source

Question #10
What is a great method for quickly editing a lot of photos?
Honestly, I have no idea. I edit my photos individually. I’m sure there are programs out there to that do this, but I can’t give any advice on it because I don’t do it.

Question #11
How do you give photos a warm glow without making them look blurry?
I’m kind of stumped on this. I could probably give a better answer if I had a photo example; preferably a photo taken by me so I can see what I did to the photo.


Thank you for all of your questions! I hope my answers were useful to you. Feel free to ask any other photography and/or editing questions in the future!

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