I don't know if you noticed the wonderfully colourful displays of dandelions in early April, but they certainly caught my eye and lifted my spirits. Yes, I know they're considered by a weed, but they can be used medicinally, and, as guinea pig owners will testify, they make a tasty snack for these small rodents as well as many other pets! Weed, or herb, they brighten the roadside verges and provide a cheery burst of yellow for the passer by. I was so taken by one patch that I decided to stop and get my camera out and play with my f stops and shutter speeds to try and find the best way to capture the sight.
If I've lost you with that terminology, let me start again: the f number relates to the size of the aperture that opens up inside the camera lens to allow light onto the sensor (or film). It's a bit like your pupil dilating in dark room - it does this to let in the maximum amount of light available in dim conditions. With the f number on a camera this has an additional effect (and I don't know if this is the same with the human eye) which is that it reduces the 'depth of field' - the amount of the view that is in focus. The smaller the number, the bigger the aperture, and the smaller the depth of field. If conditions are bright and sunny, the camera, or the operator, can compensate for this by only opening the aperture for a tiny amount of time, so that the sensor is not over exposed, which would make the picture look too light, losing detail. This exposure is controlled by the shutter speed. Sometimes you may want to use this effect to highlight the subject of the picture, blurring anything distracting in the background. This is a nice technique to use for informal, natural looking portraits. It's quite fashionable at the moment and I think this may be because it looks more like what we see with our own eyes: when we look at something near to us, objects at a distance are out of focus. In the example below, your attention is drawn to the one 'special' dandelion among the crowd.
Kate West owns and runs Nutshell Photography from her home in Silverton, Devon. For more information about Nutshell Photography or to discuss how to contract Kate to photograph your wedding, special occasion etc. please seewww.nutshellphotography.co.uk 
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