I have a typical example of a photography newbie making a basic but impactful mistake, and it was my mistake. I truly hope it's typical, because it's embarrassing enough as it is, but here we are. When I got my first camera, I did what most brand-new photographers do: I went out and shot the local area. A week or two in, I came across the concept of foreground interest. On my next outing, I incorporated that, only to find that everything but my foreground interest was soft, bordering blurry. Welcome, dear Rob, to the concept of aperture.
I read up on the subject, but I found it dull and a bit confusing on paper, but I had a solution and it worked: my images were in focus from front to back. As time ticked by, a new issue bothered me: it looks as if all my shots were 360p and the photographers I followed were shooting in 1080p (4K wasn't common knowledge back then!). I, of course, blamed my camera before I got around to questioning myself. Many of you will already know what I was doing wrong, but in case you don't, I was setting my aperture to as high as it would go (f/22 if I recall correctly.) You live and learn!
