Up the Sunbeam

My camera is one of my favorite teachers. When I look through my viewfinder, there is a useful little rectangle in the center called the focus area. As I decide how I want to frame my picture, I can place that focus area indicator on specific parts of the scene and lock in the focus, which will help me make some important decisions. One decision I have to make is to choose the subject of my pictur e. What am I trying to capture? What does the scene in my viewfinder say to me? What best conveys the beauty I see? Is the whole scene important, or is there one detail that I want to highlight. I can dramatically change the way a picture looks just by picking different focal points in the same scene. Another decision is how much of the picture I want to be in sharp focus. For some kinds of photography I may want the whole scene to be uniformly as sharp as possible. For other shots, I may want only one aspect of the scene to be in crystal clear sharpness and leave the re...