The Brenizer effect

Dan Mold shows you how to shoot and stitch together a portrait panorama for buttery-smooth shallow depth-of-field effects

THE MISSION

Create a portrait panorama image

Time needed

One hour

Skill level

Advanced

Kit needed

• Telephoto lens

• Photoshop
At the time of writing social distancing is still in place, but don’t worry, I’m going to show you how to get some amazing portraits from a safe distance using a telephoto lens.

The idea is take lots of pictures of your model with a long focal length lens, like a 70-200mm. Then you lock off the focus and shoot a burst of images from the model’s head, as well as their surroundings, and then stitch them altogether in Photoshop to create a much larger panoramic file. Not only will the result give you a much higher resolution image, it’ll also give you a much shallower depth of field, creating a beautiful separation between the model and background – mimicking the look of a medium format image. It’s also just a really fun and effective technique to try out, even when social distancing rules ease further, that will sharpen both your camera and editing skills. Here’s how…

HOW TO CREATE A ‘BRENIZER’ PORTRAIT IMAGE