The two subject focus rule

Jaguars in the wild Exotic birds in flight Caiman Giant river otters

This rule of mine applies to all kinds of subjects, not just wildlife. In the picture at right, there are two subjects and both species of flowers are sharp. That works.

With static subjects like flowers or wine glasses or kids sitting on a sofa, you have time to arrange the elements to make sure two (or more) subjects are sharp. Sometimes, though, situations present themselves that are not ideal. The picture below is an example.

I photographed these rock hyraxes in Namibia. I used a Canon 100-400mm telephoto, and that meant the depth of field was fairly shallow. The animal in the center of the frame isn’t sharp because it was standing a few inches closer to the lens than the hyrax on the right. I could focus on one of the animals but not on both. My lens aperture was f/5.6 because of the relatively low light, so I couldn’t get both of the hyraxes in focus. Even if I could have used f/32, the use of the telephoto plus the relatively close lens-subject distance meant I probably would not have

Is there a way to fix this problem? Yes, there is. The solution can be seen below where both of the hyraxes are sharp. This approach requires you to take two pictures in quick succession, first one animal and then the other in which you re-focus between shots. In other words, both individual images show at least one of the animals sharp. Then, in Photoshop, you combine the two pictures so both animals are sharply defined.

The black-tailed deer fawns I captured on Vancouver Island in British Columbia are both sharp, as they should be, but I shot this with film years before Photoshop made the scene. In order to insure both animals were sharp, I had to wait until they (hopefully) posed equidistant to the camera. §

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