Last Friday night I metup with about a dozen local photographers and a few models at a studio in downtown Baltimore to bounce ideas off one another and create some great images.

My friend Bill Millios headed up the effort of organizing this get together. Bill provided all the eats and drinks for us during the four hours we had access to the photo studio.

The tomatoes are in high production mode and I was out picking some this afternoon. I happened to have my camera around my neck for I was taking a few pictures of my daughter and her friend as they were playing.

In looking down the fence and knowing I had my 135 f/2.0L lens on my camera, I thought I’d take a very low depth of field picture on a long fence railing — and see what sort of an image would come of it.

I focused down the fence about 4 feet away and snapped this shot. You can see very clearly what a narrow depth of field produces. The depth of field at f/2.0 from 4 feet away is only about 1/8″ in front and behind the focus point. The small area in-focus looks more like stitches rather than wood.

This narrow depth of field is really great when taking portraits, for you can focus on the eyes and have the entire background blurred out to not distract from the subject. This blurring of the image produced by the lens is called bokeh. If taking a group of people, a very narrow depth of field is not what you will want to achieve, for one person may be in focus, but the other subject will be blurry.

On Saturday, the weather was absolutely beautiful — sunny and about 82 degrees — so I rode up to Havre de Grace to see the Art Festival. A friend of mine, Brian Krista, staff photographer for The Aegis had a booth at the show.

I just purchased a new Sigma 14mm f/2.8 lens and had it along with me, so grabbed this quick shot of Brian and his booth setup.

Brian took first place and the blue ribbon in the photographers category — Congratulations Brian!