I believe that controlling the background is at least half the battle in composing a photograph. Yesterday, I noticed a colorful building positioned behind a blooming pear tree. The challenge was finding a clean, mostly isolated branch that was placed in front of that background. Fortunately, I found a suitable branch.
Next, I blurred the background so that it wouldn't distract from my subject--the blossoms. Using a long telephoto lens (300mm) made blurring the background easy. And, I love how the Nikon 300 2.8 lens renders blurred backgrounds!
