Congratulations to Tyler, who won the drawing for the March homework assignment. For being favored by my computer’s random number generator, he wins a signed print from my Flower Porn series.
I was impressed with the submissions– you guys really understood what it took to blur your backgrounds. There were adorable dogs, jewelry, walls, lots of flowers, and plenty of other interesting subjects. The bell was a fascinating and slightly nontraditional composition. Of all of the submissions, I think the bouillon was my personal favorite for moodiness and interesting lighting.
Everybody seemed to understand that the right way to do this was to use a very wide aperture, and almost everyone shot in aperture priority mode. Several people mentioned changing the ISO to get a better shutter speed. A couple of you even mentioned moving closer to your subject in order to get a more desirable depth of field– that’s an excellent technique!
If you learned just one thing from this assignment, I hope it was this: visualize the image before you shoot, and then figure out how to use your camera to capture the picture that’s in your mind. Digital cameras make it very easy to just shoot lots and lots of images until you get lucky, but just a little bit of skill and forethought will do much better.
A print of this image will be in the mail to Tyler soon. And get ready, because the April homework is on its way. It might be a little bit more challenging, but it will also allow a lot more creativity. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you guys do with this one, since the March entries were all great.
Thank you all for contributing!
Stop Shooting Auto! 
It warms my heart to know you liked my bouillon shot. I can’t take credit for the light though. It was the late afternoon sun/early evening sun and I noticed it as I stood shivering (from fever) in my kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil so that I could drink said bouillon.
Oh, don’t be silly Sarah. You spotted interesting lighting, and that’s an excellent skill.