Ornate gateway arch, Silang, Philippines

A beautiful archway Adam. I think I'd have preferred to see this with a much wider aperture as the silhouette of the archway gets rather lost against the trees beyond. I think a bit of exposure adjustment might also help as to me it seems a touch overexposed.

Lovely find though and a nicely chosen composition. Thanks for sharing!

Okay. I'm still learning about what all the settings on my camera do! So increasing the aperture would have somehow made the arch's silhouette more sharp? A lot of what I do is serendipity. I'm not always entirely sure how I got a result that I like! Nor how to replicate it or improve on it...

Hi Adam,

Not exactly, in fact shooting at a wide aperture (lower f/number) is likely to reduce the sharpness of the image slightly (lenses usually have a "sweet spot" and perform better when stopped down a little). However, using a wider aperture allows you to selectively focus on a particular plane, with areas out of this plane appearing more blurred. It's a simple and effective technique to draw the viewer to a certain part of the image. There are plenty of pages with more information on this subject, for example here on photo.net.

The degree to which you can do this is likely to be somewhat limited by your lens (I presume you're using a kit lens with your Rebel T1i?), nevertheless, it's worth looking at as a technique for the future, when you are shooting in different circumstances (the effect is more pronounced the larger the relative distance between your subject and the background), or when you start to think about other lenses you might want to use.

There's a lot to be said for learning by trial and error (it's a lot cheaper and more immediate now than when I was doing it with film), but a bit of theory can be a good shortcut.  Nevertheless it can be a confusing concept if you're new to photography, so feel free to ask if you still have further questions.

Best wishes, Mark

Thanks, Mark.  I get it.  My brother-in-law showed that to me once, but I never thought about when to use it, but I can definitely see what you're talking about now.  Having the background trees blurred a bit would have helped the archway stand out more.  Makes sense.  I'll have to try that some time.  Thanks for the tip!  The only way I've done that before (making the background blurry with the foreground sharp) is by getting close to my subject.