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Aperture is often perceived as a light control instrument and a background blur generation tool. But one quality is rarely discussed.
Your lens aperture is in fact an attention instrument. More than anything, it controls attention. It decides, on behalf of your viewer, how much attention they spend on one part of the frame and how much they spend on another.
When you look at a photograph shot at f/1.2 and feel that small jolt of excitement, what you're actually responding to is not the blur. It's the clarity: how cleanly you can perceive one thing, with nothing around it competing for your attention.
We are not used to seeing anything that way, and that is why it excites us so much. Having a headshot of someone with his eyes fully in focus and the rest falling into a nice background blur is truly magical. It makes people beautiful.
THE ATTENTION BUDGET, AND WHERE APERTURE FITS INTO IT
You see, what we've learned over the recent decade working with visual art is that attention is the most valuable currency. If you look at most of the algorithms out there, they are all fighting for your attention and try to keep you in their system for as long as possible.
When we consume visual content, we are mostly using our eyes and our ears. They decide if this is engaging and interesting enough to explore further.
If you look at a photo from an attention point of view, you will find that the stronger photographs engage the viewer. They keep his attention. While the weak ones struggle to initially engage him, and he simply passes by. That is how photography has been judged today by the algorithms. If it's good at holding the viewer's attention, the algorithm flags it as interesting and shows it to more people.
So how does the viral, attention-holding quality of a photograph connect to aperture?
If we go even deeper into the attention rabbit hole, we will find that when the viewer stumbles on a photograph, he has only 100% of attention to spend while looking inside it. Every element that is in the frame eats a small piece of that attention: your subject, the background, the other objects, the lines, the textures, the bright spots, they are all deciding factors if the viewer will stay or not.
And aperture is one of the instruments you use to control how that attention gets spent. It even decides how many elements are going to compete for it.
If you use a low aperture and blur the background, the details behind your area of focus will get stripped away, and that part will not require any attention, leaving most of it for your subject. If you use a higher aperture value and keep everything sharp, every layer in the frame will be visible, which makes every element now bidding for the viewer's attention at once.
And that makes aperture so much more than just "sharp vs. blurry." It's a decision about what part of the image is going to get heard, and how strongly.
Look at this photograph. These are two boys standing on their boats. The scene showcases them, it gives enough foreground elements showing that there are more boats there, and we can also see the city behind, which gives more of a sense of place.
What do you think is the aperture here? Is it f/16? Is it f/8? Or maybe f/1.4?
Before I answer this question, let's speak a bit about intention. What is my main objective here? Who do I want to show? Well, it's the boys, of course.
So if I want to focus the majority of the attention on the boys, I should probably use the lowest aperture possible, that will blur, or at least weaken, the background a lot and will soften all these lines in the foreground. You could probably guess by now that the photo hasn't been shot at f/1.4. Since we can see a lot of the environment, it must be a different aperture value.
Let's get back to my objective, what do I want to show? I wanted to show the whole scene, show the boats at the front, and also show the city behind. So since the image is showing different layers of depth, it must be some high aperture value, maybe f/11 or f/16.
f/16 would make all planes of depth visible as clearly as possible, but that would affect some of the image's sharpness.
Now, I photographed the image at f/8. And I'll tell you what my decision process was. I wanted the boats in the front, I wanted the boys, and I wanted a sense of place. I did want to have the city visible, but didn't want to include more of it than needed. So for me, f/8 was enough. It allowed enough depth, without bringing too much attention to the city. I carefully controlled the amount of attention spent on each layer of depth.
THE THREE WAYS MOST PHOTOGRAPHERS USE APERTURE
Most photographers, without really naming it, default to one of three approaches.
The first is complete isolation. Shoot at f/1.2, maybe f/1.8, with only your subject receiving the majority of attention. At low apertures, everything else than your subject steps aside, blurred into shapes and color with no competing details left to read.
The second is the opposite: total inclusion of everything.
Shoot from f/9-11 and upward, bringing the attention to everything in the frame: foreground, subject, background. They are all visible, all sharp, all demanding to be read as part of the same story.
The third one is optimal sharpness. Every lens has a range, usually somewhere around f/5.6 to f/7.1, where it's simply at its technical best. At these values it's sharpest, with the least aberration, and barely any diffraction.
A lot of photographers default there because it's the safest technical choice, and keeps things simple for them. They read somewhere that this is where the lens performs the best, so they just shoot there. There is not a slight thought about attention there.
The main objective is sharpness.
Now, none of these three is right or wrong on its own. But don't treat any one of them as your default, without understanding what it costs you.
Isolation works when your subject can carry the frame alone, a strong gesture, an interesting face, a moment that doesn't need context to land.
Total inclusion works when the story is bigger than any one person in it, when the relationship between your subject and everything around them is the actual point.
And the sweet-spot default works when that sharpness is important to you in that particular scene.
But here I have to share something. Sharpness is kind of overrated, the most budget lenses of today outshine the lenses of the last century, and yet there is plenty of good photography done with them. So let's forget about sharpness for now, it's the least important out of the three.
THE F/11 LESSON, AND WHAT PEOPLE GOT WRONG ABOUT IT
About a year ago, I put out a video that became a real eye-opener for a lot of people who were used to shooting wide open by default.
The idea was that composition really starts at f/11: that shooting that way forces you to become far more attentive to what's actually happening in a scene, and far more deliberate about solving compositional problems with framing instead of letting blur solve them for you.
If you want to watch the full thing, I'll link it below; it goes deep into that concept with a lot of unpacking.
What turned out to be more interesting for me than the video itself was what happened after it went out.
I started getting messages from people.
Some were genuinely excited, telling me they had switched to shooting everything at f/11 from now on, and that it really opened their eyes about composition and scene development. But there was also another group telling me that f/11 is exactly where a lens starts hitting its technical limits, that diffraction sets in and starts softening the image.
They were basically worried that the images are not going to be sharp.
So I have to admit something here.
f/11 was never meant to be a literal setting. It was a way to illustrate a concept.
And while I do shoot at f/11 a lot, there's a wide, and very useful, range between f/1.2 to f/11 and further.
Locking yourself into one of the extremes misses the whole concept of using aperture to control attention.
What the video was really about was context and about discipline, not a default setting. When you can't rely on blur to erase your mistakes, you're forced to actually look at everything in the frame before you shoot: you look at where your subject is, where the background sits, whether there is anything crossing your subject's silhouette. Does the context work? It was about learning to see beyond the subject, and understanding that there is more to photography than a single subject with a blurred background.
Those who took it as a permanent setting missed that the point was never the number. It was what shooting at that number forces you to do with your composition.
PHOTOGRAPHY COMPOSITION IS A GAME OF COMPROMISE
If you shoot at f/11 or higher, you'll almost always need to make up for the lost light somewhere else, usually by pushing your ISO. I've had people send me images shot at f/11 and ISO 25,600, genuinely proud of nailing the depth of field, without noticing what that ISO number was doing to the image. Every setting related to exposure you touch pulls on every other exposure setting. Aperture never moves alone.
And aperture is not a fixed setting. When you adjust it, you compromise: it buys you attention in one point and costs attention in another spot.
If you move from f/1.2 to f/5.6, you compromise how completely your subject dominates the attention. But you win context: more of the scene stays visible, more of the story around your subject gets to exist in the frame with them.
If you move from f/11 to f/4, you compromise the context and the sharpness of the whole scene. But you win focus: more of the viewer's attention gets directed onto your subject, and less gets spent on everything around them.
Sometimes all you need is to weaken the environment, not completely exclude it.
These are all different trades. The only question worth asking before you turn that dial is what you're trying to say with the frame, what is your intention.
This is also why the old saying "f/8 and be there" is such a trap. f/8 sits comfortably in most lenses' sharp range, which makes it feel like a safe, neutral choice. But there's no such thing as a neutral aperture. f/8 is still a decision about how much of the scene's context is getting in with your subject.
I want to show you a few photographs that might have some strange aperture decisions. But I'll explain the reasoning.
I have this railroad photo shot at f/1.4.
This is something many photographers would shoot at a much higher aperture.
The reasons I chose a lower aperture were the following: first, my focus point was very far, I was focusing on the person in the middle, that made the depth of field large enough to get everything into the scene in relative sharpness.
And the second one was the strong geometry, it was just too strong, so I wanted a little bit of softness with all these shapes. The f/1.4 gave me a bit of a softer look for an otherwise very edgy composition.
Next one. This gentleman with his cart was also shot at f/1.4.
I wanted to have a feeling of the surrounding area, I didn't want to have the bushes' leaves around sharp, or having every little stone visible, all these little areas of sharpness are reducing the harmonious feeling of the image. I wanted sharpness at my subject, but I wanted him wrapped in softness. So here I used the same trick to soften the environment. The goal wasn't to blur the environment completely, just soften it.
Here I'm photographing at f/4.
I wanted to capture the sleeping boy, the woman working around him, and having the visible shape of the other sleeping people on the roof. But I still wanted to keep the majority of attention on the boy. If I had photographed that image with f/8, for example, it would have sharpened a lot of the small background details and spilled the attention unnecessarily backward. If I had used f/1.4, it would have just focused on the boy. I wanted the environment to be present, but not so strong. Therefore, f/4 worked just fine here.
WHY THIS CONNECTS TO THE HERO
In my composition course, I talk a lot about the hero: the one subject in your frame that should carry the weight of the story, with everyone and everything else supporting rather than competing.
Depth of field is, by a wide margin, the single most common way photographers assign hero status. Isolate your subject with a wide aperture, and you've made the decision for the viewer before they've even had a chance to look around the frame. There's no competition, because you've removed everyone else from the attention entirely.
But hero status doesn't always have to be won this way. Sometimes a closed aperture doesn't undermine the hero at all. It adds the supporting cast around them, just like the woman and the environment around the sleeping boy. The other participants who help the story make more sense.
That's the real reason aperture matters so much more than a technical setting. It's a decision about who gets to be the hero of your frame, and how much of the rest of the world you let stay in the picture with them.
It's worth noticing that these two tools, hero and environment, are really the same idea looked at from different angles. The hero concept asks who should own the frame. The environment is establishing the context. And aperture is simply the fastest tool that helps you to move that attention in the field. It is faster than repositioning, faster than waiting for a better background, faster than almost anything else available to you in a fleeting street moment.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE: APERTURE IN THE FIELD
You'll probably ask, but how do I decide the aperture in the field?
So here are a few little things that will help you do so.
LIGHT COMES FIRST
One of the first decision factors is light. If the light is not right, we might not be able to see the rest properly.
So if there's too much light, if we shoot on a bright day, an open aperture might not be an option. There is a chance that the shutter speed reaches its higher limits and you couldn't technically use a wide aperture. If you do, you would simply overexpose.
That leaves you with two options: first one is to use an ND filter, and the second is to close the aperture down. Often, adjusting the aperture is just the quicker choice.
*This was shot at f/8, 1/1000s. I kept the highlights under control, underexposing slightly on purpose to match the mood I was after.*
Similarly, when there is not enough light, a closed aperture simply won't work in low light. You can of course raise your ISO or slow your shutter, but often, opening the aperture is the better trade.
*This one was shot at f/1.4. It was around 4am, and the only light source was a single bare bulb, shooting with a wide aperture was the better decision.*
WHEN YOU WANT THE BACKGROUND TO BE PART OF THE STORY
A closed aperture keeps both your foreground subject and your background in relative focus. Which is useful for scenes where the entire street, and everyone in it, is part of what you're saying. You want the viewer to spend the attention across the whole frame, on purpose.
*This was shot with a 35mm lens at f/11. Shooting this scene with an open aperture would have disconnected my subject from everyone around him, and the story would have felt completely different: like he was dancing alone, instead of as part of the wider scene he was actually part of.*
WHEN YOU WANT MOTION BLUR WITH A SHARP FOREGROUND
Sometimes the effect you're after isn't about depth of field at all, it's about motion blur.
Motion blur photos are tricky, you almost always need to go to extreme slow shutter speeds, that allows more light to enter the sensor, so you technically have to compensate with aperture. So if you're trying to work with motion blur during the day, most likely you will have to close the aperture a lot.
This is an additional reminder that aperture is not only about depth of field. Sometimes you're reaching for it purely because the exposure settings demand it.
WHEN YOU WANT A SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD
A shallow depth of field pulls attention naturally toward your subject by blurring everything else and creating a sense of isolation, letting the eye gravitate to the sharpest part of the frame without effort. The attention is spent almost entirely in one place.
FOR MOST PORTRAITS
Shallow depth of field isolates a subject and creates that soft, pleasing background blur known as bokeh. It's a popular choice for portraits. But if you are shooting several people and they are at different distances from the camera, you might want to go up with the aperture value.
WHEN THE BACKGROUND IS BUSY AND NEEDS ISOLATING
Background, for me, is one of the most important reasons to change my aperture. You should always think about how much power you want to give to the background. Will you let all of it be visible, will you give a sense of it, or will you eliminate its presence completely? A wider aperture changes the background from sharp to just being weaker, it helps you keep your attention on your subject. How strong the effect will be is up to you to decide.
WHEN SEVERAL SUBJECTS SHARE THE FRAME, BUT ONLY ONE MATTERS
It's common to have more than one potential subject in a scene. A wide aperture lets you assign importance deliberately: focus on the one that matters more, and let a shallow depth of field weaken the competition from the other.
WHEN APERTURE BARELY MATTERS AT ALL
There are situations where there's little real difference between f/4 and f/11, and we need to recognize these as well.
For example, if you are photographing something like a detail shot, no macro, just someone's hands, let's say, f/4 would usually be enough. There's no point going higher, it will give you nothing.
It is very similar if your photograph has no depth. Let's say someone is standing close to a wall. Low and high aperture would look almost identical.
There is no need to shoot with f/11 for someone standing near a wall. f/4 would be enough.
THE TAKEAWAY
Aperture was never a technical checkbox. It's the tool you use to decide how much of your viewer's attention goes where.
There's no correct answer sitting at f/1.2, f/5.6, or f/11. There's only the question worth asking before you press the shutter: where does the attention go, what's important here.
Of course there are the technical limitations, but this is the key purpose. Allocate attention.
For the practical numbers - which f-stop for which street scenario - see my guide to the best aperture for street photography.
I hope it was helpful. If there are some unanswered questions, ask them in the comments. And have a happy shooting. See you next time.