Reducing Depth of Field

Have you seen those amazing pictures by Ansel Adams? Absolutely sharp and an infinite depth of field. Beautiful. And perfect for the landscapes shown.
 

However, for many subjects less depth of field may be desirable: all the details in the background may not matter and you want to guide the view to the important parts of the picture.

 Here, the background would have just distracted from the main subject. Using a tele lens (from a similar small boat) I intentionally reduced Depth of Field .

Automatic exposure will usually not achieve this. If your camera allows for manual interference with these settings, play a little with the aperture. Try different combination of exposure time and aperture - you will find that the results are vastly different.
Generally speaking, the wider yo open your lens (increasing aperture), the lower your depth of field will be. This means that only a small part of the picture will be tack sharp, the rest more or less blurred.
This is very often used in portraits, where only part of the face may be sharp, with no discernible background details.

When travelling, sometimes, there even may be simply too much light to effectively chose an artistically pleasing aperture.
In this case, a neutral grey filter may reduce the light without changing the colours.

 

Travel Photo Net

How to take good travel photos