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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spb_stan" data-source="post: 678181" data-attributes="member: 43545">The suggestion of a number of posts back for focusing, and recomposing is not likely to keep what you want in focus. Fields are not planes but arcs so depending on the distance along the arc from the point you locked focus and the same eye's position in relation to the new center of the recomposed focus point, might be far out of focus. It is best to keep the most forward eye under the focus point when both composing and shooting. People shots do not have to be in sharp focus, in fact, most people prefer their own portraits less sharp and our mental processing of scene and the impression of sharpness varies greatly with the subject matter. The main exception is the eye. Humans and other animals evolved to place a great deal of importance on eye discovery and estimation of focus. Ever notice that when you are in a big crowd, you instantly zoom your attention to that one person, out of hundreds or thousands who is focused on you?  Or walking in the woods with foliage and broken light, shadows and a million leaves, branches, rocks etc and you sense and spot an animal highly camouflaged looking at you.  It was a great survival trait that evolved. When seeing a photo of a person if the eye closest to the camera is focused on the camera(and you as a viewer from the camera's line of sight) will look very sharp and revealing of a connection with the person if that forward eye is sharply in focus. The whole face registers with us as being realistic or attractively sharp but close inspection an show it very out of focus with detail and blemishes erased from our perception until looking very close. That how our brains evolved, to detect other beings and to evaluate based on the nearest eye's sharpness. Generally speaking people like images with a sharp forward eye and everything else blurred. We assume it is sharp when it is not and tend to think the mostly blurred image is more attractive.  The brain is confused if the eye nearest is dull from blur and the rearward eye is sharp or some other feature is sharper. So don't be as concerned with very sharp people images, just make sure the nearest eye is. In fashion and other work sharpness is important in that the clothing and accessories are what are featured so stopped down apertures are the norm. The blurred background is not needed for subject isolation because the photographer is in full control of the background. Single person portraits however often are environmental so subject isolation is welcome. Lots of techniques have become popular for working with uncontrolled spaces such as High Key and Low  Key lighting which either makes the background disappear from blowing out the background or push into the black of low exposureWorking with light and exposure is one of the most versatile and creative aspects of photography that costs almost nothing and can be done anywhere. But is is also a specialty that seems intimidating until one actually does it and discovers it is not as complicated as almost any other specialty.</blockquote>

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