Key Takeaways
- A shallow depth of field makes subjects pop by blurring the background and focusing on the main element of a photo.
- Achieve a shallow depth of field on smartphones by using Portrait mode when shooting, or adding it later using an app like Snapseed.
- Apply a shallow depth of field to portraits and macro photography to highlight the subject and capture all the details effectively.
A really simple-yet-effective way to make the subject in a photo pop is to create a shallow depth of field. This makes the background fade away, allowing the subject to take center stage with nothing to distract the viewer from it. And while it’s more difficult to create a shallow depth of field using a smartphone, it is still possible through a combination of shooting and editing.
What Is a Shallow Depth of Field in Photography?
A shallow depth of field is a photographic technique that sees one element of a photo picked out in sharp focus, with the rest of the photo out of focus or blurred. The element that’s kept in sharp focus is usually in the foreground, with everything in the background blurred. But that isn’t a hard rule.
As a photographer, it’s your job to draw people into your shots and guide them as to what you’re trying to communicate with them. And when done well, a shallow depth of field can draw people’s attention to a specific part of a photo, making them think more about it.
With a DSLR, achieving a shallow depth of field is relatively simple. By zooming in on the subject, and adjusting the aperture and focal length, you can get your hardware to do the hard work.
With a smartphone, that’s tougher, especially if your phone doesn’t let you change settings manually. But it is possible to achieve good results with a combination of shooting with a shallow depth of field in mind and editing to bolster the effect.
How to Make Subjects Pop When Shooting on Your Phone
The best way to create a convincing shallow depth of field is to shoot with that in mind. Because while skillful editing can fix most things, you’re still stuck with the photo you shot initially. So, when lining up a shot on your smartphone, keep your desire to make your subject pop out of the screen in mind.
If your phone has a Manual or Pro mode, then achieving a shallow depth of field is easy (once you know how). The key is to adjust your smartphone camera’s aperture, making it wide enough to let lots of light in without being so wide as to blur everything in the shot, including the main subject.
However, if your phone only has preset modes, the best thing you can do is switch to Portrait before shooting. Portrait mode is designed to create a shallow depth of field by focusing on the subject in the center of the shot, while blurring the background. Some phones can create a satisfying bokeh effect too, but that is slightly different from standard blurring.
To take a shot with a shallow depth of field, switch to Portrait mode, and line your shot up. To help bolster the effect, you can move further away from the subject and zoom in on it. If there’s the capacity to do so with the subject in question, you can also look to capture a lot of background, as while it will end up blurred, it can add to the overall effect. The key, though, is to keep your subject centered and in focus.
How to Make Subjects Pop by Editing With Snapseed
Now that you have your shot of a subject you want to draw viewers’ attention to, you can edit it to exaggerate the effect and really make it pop. There are plenty of image editors capable of doing this, but I personally use Snapseed (available on Android and iOS) to edit my smartphone shots on my smartphone. And it’s as good at creating an artificial shallow depth of field as any others I have tried.
Snapseed boasts a robust Lens Blur tool that can be used to create an artificial shallow depth of field. You can select what part of the photo to focus on, the size and shape of the portion kept in focus, plus the blur strength, vignette strength, and transition setting.
To create or accentuate a shallow depth of field effect, open your shot in Snapseed and tap the Tools tab. Then find and tap the Lens Blur tool. You should see a blue dot surrounded by two concentric circles. The dot is the point of focus, with the circles representing the degrees of blur.
At this point, you can change the point of focus, and the size and shape of the circle (using the pinch-to-zoom gesture). You can also change the blur strength, vignette strength, and transition setting. The best thing to do is experiment with all of the above until it works for the shot you’re working with.
When You Should Create a Shallow Depth of Field
A shallow depth of field isn’t always appropriate, and can actually be either overused or used inappropriately. However, for some photos, it can make the ordinary extraordinary, pulling a subject out of a muddy background. If you use it at the right time and with the right subjects, your photos will benefit from it.
The most obvious application for a shallow depth of field is portrait photography. While having a background can be useful for context, when shooting portraits, you always want the subject to be the star of the show. By focusing solely on your subject’s face, blurring everything else around it out, you can better capture someone’s essence.
The other obvious example is macro photography, where you’re trying to capture something small in great detail. Whether it’s the pattern on the wings of an insect or the texture of a flower’s petals, without blurring the background by applying a shallow depth of field, you risk the details being swallowed up by other, less important, elements.
Having said all of that, photographs with a shallow depth of field applied can work across most photography genres.
In conclusion, the key is to think about whether a photo you’re shooting would benefit from a shallow depth of field. If so, shoot with that in mind, switching mode or changing settings as needed. Then edit your photo with your preferred image editing app to ramp up the effect.
