Don’t forget the dead stuff! These dried leaves were a rusty red color and with the sun behind them, they glowed. The color in the background is from an Arizona Ash tree with a few yellow leaves left. The blue is the sky.
What makes this photo is the use of what’s called “shallow depth of field”. It means I used a large aperture (or small number). Compact cameras have a difficult time getting this kind of depth of field because their small sensors don’t have as much of a range of f/stops. So even though you have f2.8, it’s still much sharper than on an SLR. There are tricks to help, though. For instance, stand far away from your subject and then zoom in using f/2.8 and you might get lucky.
Click here for a link to an excellent video about Depth of Field.
