Tufted Titmouse

Nikon D300, Nikon 70-200mm at 200mm, 1/250 at f/4.

As the weather has dropped into the teens, more and more birds have been eating from the bird feeder in my father's backyard. Yesterday, I took the photo above right after a morning workout. I noticed two cardinals at the feeder and snapped a few shots of them, but the photo of the tufted titmouse above was the best of the bunch.

I used a long focal length (200mm) with a large aperture (f/4) to create the great bokeh, or background blur. This is important because the background tree branches were too distracting and therefore needed to be blurred to emphasize the bird and feeder in the foreground. To get this effect use a low f-stop, such as f/3.5 or f/4. The lower the f number and the farther away you are from the subject, the more blurry the background will become. If I had used a small aperture (large f number), such as f/14, the trees and background would also have been in focus (creating the opposite effect and no bokeh).