Using wider apertures to blur backgrounds.

This was a photo I clicked two years back.  I had the concept in mind before I set out to find a suitable setting.  I finally found it in a ganpati pandal in Khetwadi, Mumbai during the annual ganesh festival.  As everyone knows, the mouse is the carrier animal of the mighty Ganesha and whispering your wishes in his ear is a method of communicating your wishes to Lord Ganesha.

Khetwadi area of Mumbai is where you can find many Ganeshas in various avatars during the Ganesh Festival.  Generally the mouse is placed by the side of Ganesha, but here he is placed facing his lord and a couple of meters away from him.  The devotees line up to whisper their wishes into the ears of the mouse presenting the photographer with an ideal opportunity to show the lord seated in the background, his big ears all set to catch what his carrier the mouse conveys to him.


Here I used a vertical composition so as to get the whole portrait of Lord Ganesha seated in all his splendour.  I used the 50mm Canon lens at an aperture of F/2.8.  This is one of the widest apertures used causing the depth of field to be shallow.  This causes the background to blur throwing up circular bokeh of the reflected lights on top of Ganesha's head.


I focussed the lens on the mouse and the child throwing them into sharp focus on top of the blurred background.   Instead of getting a glassy smooth background I got a recognisable Lord Ganesha because He was not too far from the point of focus.  It was important for the story in the picture to get a recognisable Ganesha smiling benignly in the background.


Wide apertures are indicated by small F numbers on the lens.  F/1.4, F/2.8, and F/3.5 are some of the wide apertures used by photographers to blur the background.  Blurring the background immediately focusses the viewer's attention on the subject of your photograph.