In the cold of winter, sometimes it's good to look back on one of my Spring photo shoots...

One way of creating depth in a photograph is to include foreground, middle and background elements within the frame. I saw an opportunity to accomplish just that during my visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Probably the most impressive display of tulips was located right at the entrance station to the park. I positioned myself on one side of the street and focused on the tulips that were planted on the center island of the road. With the camera positioned very low to the ground, I was able to eliminate the street from view.

While composing this picture, I made sure to frame the center island tulips with the tulips planted in the bed directly in front of me. I also included enough tulips from across the road to frame the top of the image. By using a very wide aperture (f/2.2), only the tulips planted on the center island remain sharp, while the tulips in the foreground and in the background are blurred. This narrow field of sharpness also helps focus the viewer's attention on my primary subject.

Because f/2.2 is such a wide aperture, it enables a faster shutter speed (1/800th)--even at the low base ISO of 100 (for optimal image quality). However, since this is a stationary subject, I secured the camera/lens to a tripod, locked the mirror up and pressed a cable release to eliminate any camera shake.

Tulips