Blurry Backgrounds........

One comment/question that comes up all the time from many of my customers is..... "I Love how you make the subject/person so clear and all the rest of the picture blurred. HOW do you do that"?!? Well, honestly "I" don't do it, my lens does. Granted it helps that I know how to set my camera and work with the lens and light to get this result, but it's not magic or just my skills. As you can see from these two "identical" images, either a fairly crisp background or a softened background is possible just by changing a setting on my camera and letting the lens do it's work. At a setting of f11, most of the image is clear while at f2.8 I get the "blurred" effect on all areas except what I focused on. So no magic, just a FANTASTIC set of lenses! This shot was taken with a Canon 17-55mm 2.8 IS lens. No Photoshop magic here either, just images straight out of the camera.