Big Apertures.

Rain drops on the washing line.

Just experimenting with lenses wide open again.  It's quite interesting how great the effect can be on just how much of the image is focussed and discernable.  Take the first shot for example.  Almost everything is blurred except for a few water droplets towards the centre of the image.  Click on the photo to get an enlarged view.  I've always found wide apertures and shallow depth of field to be interesting.  Perhaps it's because your eye never seems to do this.  As soon as you look at something it's automatically focussed, so even though there is some blur away from the centre of your vision you never seem to notice them being "soft".  As soon as you look at them, they're focussed.

Somewhat rampant ground cover under the washing line #1

Somewhat rampant ground cover under the washing line #2

Clematis, but this time in colour

In a photograph, however, you can look at all the objects in a scene in which some are focussed, and some are not.  This allows the photographer to emphasise certain objects not only by position, but by selective focus also.  The following two images may give an idea of this.  Please click on an image to get an enlarged view.  Certainly in the second shot below there's one flower that catches your eye because it's the only one in focus.

The last shot for this post is of the Clematis on the run down fence.  Aperture was now at f4, but with a longer lens and shortish distance between flower and lens there's still a pleasantly shallow depth of field.  Enough of the background is focussed for you to appreciate the context in which the flower exists, but it isn't such as to overwhelm the main subject of the image, the Clematis flower.