This video shows how focal length and zooming affect subject-background relationship in your photos

I believe you already know that “zooming with your feet” and changing the focal length can affect the relationship between your subject and the background. In this short video, you can see the effect of both coming close to the subject and changing the focal length, and how it affects the final look of your image.

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ᴊᴏsʜᴜᴀ ᴛʀᴇᴇ⁣ ⁣ Part 2 of a new collab w/ @adobecreativecloud.⁣ ⁣ In honor of Earth Month and to celebrate a little good in the world, I drove out to @joshuatreenps to create a video and inspire others to check out their local national parks. If you live in LA and have never been to Joshua Tree National Park, I highly recommend a visit. The park is located about 2.5 hours east of LA, and you can either do a quick day-trip, or if you have a couple days I’d personally recommend camping there for the night. It's easily my favorite park in the country and I've been there a bunch of times, so hit me up if you’re planning a visit and have any questions ✌🏼 ⁣ ⁣ Created with #AfterEffects ⁣ #AdobePartner #AdobeInsiders

A post shared by Ari Fararooy (@ari_fararooy) on May 8, 2018 at 10:04am PDT

The video was posted by dubby8880 on Reddit, and it’s one of those amusing short demonstrations of the focal length change. A tree is the main subject, the video starts with moving to the tree physically, without changing the focal length. In the other part, the photographer moves away from the tree while zooming in. Or rather simulates this effect by cropping and scaling (considering that the video is a collaboration between Ari Fararroy and Adobe). This makes the tree stay about the same size in the frame, and the background changes and becomes more compressed. This creates the dolly zoom effect you can see in movies such as Vertigo and Jaws.

We’ve seen before how different focal lengths work for portraits and headshots. And there’s an example here how focal length affects the depth of field. If you’re interested to read more on zooming with your feet versus zooming with your lens, make sure to check out this article and watch Jay P. Morgan‘s video below for some great examples.

[via Reddit]