To answer your questions about "depth of field"

Ever taken a picture like this and wondered what went wrong? The background is the Savage River of Danali Park Alaska and is a very interesting composition. The person in the foreground is my son, Jared and "No, he's not moving". When taking a "still" shot, something in motion will blurr out, but that didn't happen here. What happened was caused by the aperture setting of the camera. The aperture determines how much light gets through the "hole" to create your image. You may be more familiar with calling it the "f-stop". (no swearing implied or intended) A common portrait practice is to use a large "f-stop" (indicated by a smaller number, think fractions, see your math teacher was right, you will use it later in life.) of say 5.6 which gives you crystal clear images in your foreground and soft blurry non-detracting images in the background. The exact opposite of what we have here. This picture was more than likely shot with a small "f-stop" of around 22, so what is clear is far away and the foreground is blurred. So how does this work with depth of field. Depth of field is a term used to identify where your camera will shoot a sharp image and what will be blurred. A small "f-stop" has a greater depth of field, yards and yards of distance are clear, you just have to know where it starts to be clear and where it is not. At 4-6 feet from the camera as illustrated here...not clear. Maybe I should have titled this "It's all about your focus".