If you have a passion for portraits, try your hand at shooting a ‘Bokehrama’ for unusual results. Not only will you achieve shallow depth of field for beautiful blur, but you’ll also capture the perspective of a wide angle of view (it’s not possible to achieve both with one lens). The technique is similar to that of shooting a panorama – capturing a series of images and stitching them together in post-production. The difference is, shots are stitched together horizontally and vertically.
This shot is made up of approximately 50 images, all shot at 200mm. By shooting a sequence of very closely cropped images that covered a wide area of the scene, we were able to achieve this effect.
- Use a long focal length, ideally 100-200mm, and dial in a wide aperture value such as f/2.8. The narrow angle of view combined with a wide aperture will produce a shallow depth of field.
- For a seamless stitch, keep the settings the same for each image, shoot in manual mode and set a suitable WB preset. Working with large files in post-production can be time- consuming, so record in JPEG.
- Focus on your subject first, as they are least likely to stay still for the entire sequence. Set the focus, and switch to manual focus to lock it. Continue shooting from top left to bottom right, ensuring overlap.
- Use focus-stacking software to stitch your shots, especially if you have a large number of images (30+). For smaller sequences, the Photomerge Panorama tool in Photoshop does a pretty good job.
