Focus can be overrated. There are times when having less of an image in focus can create a better result than having most of the image in focus. If you really want to but emphasis on a subject or a portion of a scene use focus to do it. For example, you’re trying to get a shot of your kid who has the great smile, shooting against a cluttered background. If you have lots of depth of field, the smile gets lost in the scene. Kind of like seeing the forest and not the trees. In this case I switch to a “slice focus” or “shallow focus” technique which allows for strong emphasis on the smile and allows the background to stay just that-background. One-way to do this is to switch your camera controls to “A” or aperture priority. This allows you to pick the aperture opening and the camera will pick the shutter speed to allow for a proper exposure. If you are shooting in daylight you will have to drop your ISO “film/sensor speed” to allow for a wide-open aperture. Don’t be surprised if your shutter speed-reads well over 1/1000th of a second- that’s OK we want the aperture to be our tool. Some lenses like “primes”(fixed focal lengths between 35-100mm) give better results than a wide angle or a zoom. The wider the lenses aperture (1.4-2.8) the better the effect. I like to use the effect for more than just faces. It works well with flowers or objects were you want the viewer to look at the subject, which appears to float in the background.