Have you taken a photo when a person is out of focus? And you did it intentionally, not by accident.

It is totally OK to make the person out of focus in a photo in which your main subject is something else than the person. You want the person to be in the same frame, to create an order of magnitude, a contrast of color, size, or simply be part of the story telling.

In short, a photo with a person out of focus is not necessarily a bad photo. On the other hand, this is not an excuse to just randomly take photos without focus. It all boils down to your intention. What story are you telling? What is your focus?

When we spent our last walk along the Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island, I saw these rocks decorated with the yellow moss and loved them. The sky was gloomy without colors. Fortunately, our then 5 yr only wore red, always serving a pop of color in the frame.

Here's one more example. Once again, our 5 yo served as the pop of color in the frame. He's not the main subject. My main interest was to photograph the leading lines from the fences and trees.

It was a mid-day shot, my least favorite time to take photos. Fortunately, the shadow of the trees added some texture and content on the ground, so the lower half of my image does not look too empty, and the image overall is sort of balanced.

For comparison purpose, see above image shot in the same place almost around the same time. But the person is in focus. The two photos are almost the same. I like the second one equally well. They just tell the story differently!

Which one do you like better? I’m sure the answer is subjective. There’s no right or wrong answer which photo is definitely better. That’s the charm about photography. As long as you are willing to create, you can photograph however you want. The sky is the limit!

The above is one more example. While the person is out of focus, you can still tell what was he doing.

Nothing in this world is more attractive than toy cars for my then 4 yo. While we did our wine tasting in Mendoza, Argentina, he clearly focused on his own “tasting” - one car in the glass, two cars in the glass, different mix of cars in the glass…

Here’s a final example. I could clearly focus on the face of my 2 yo, but it was the last stop of our South America trip. And I wanted to photograph the small, and the only, souvenirs we bought during the trip.

Of course, a key requirement to make this type of photo is shallow depth of field with the smallest f-stop such as f2.0 or smaller.

Go back to Composition Tips Chapter

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