Focus behind the closer material.
There’s a fair bit of garden around the Carlson Camera Clubhouse which means an ample supply of weeds. I often find myself out with assorted pruners, bags and rakes. There just happened to be some tulips growing fairly close this afternoon’s designated work area that began calling my name as the sun dropped. Deciding I’d done enough weeding, and have taken few, if any, pictures since returning from a trip, it didn’t take long to put a macro lens on one of the camera bodies, grab a short tripod and head out for tulip close-ups in soft light. I shot in Manual mode and was careful to set the ISO just high enough (320) to provide a nice selection of f stops.
Manually focus on the subject while keeping the intervening material in the shot. I’m not certain that this will work with auto focus, so don’t bother using it. Confine the depth-of-field sharpness to the selected subject and you’ll get blur at any f stop between f 5.6 and f 11. Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to shooting this way, so allow enough time to not feel rushed.
Soft afternoon light: always good for flowers.
Focus between two subjects.