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Step 1
Mount the lowest aperture lens you have onto your camera and turn on your camera. If you don't have a camera with interchangeable lenses, set your camera to the aperture priority mode once you've turned the power on.
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Step 2
Understand the basics of aperture. Aperture is also referred to as an f-number or f-stop. The f-number of a lens is shown in ranges with some of the popular portrait lens apertures starting between f/1.2 and f/1.8 and zoom lenses ranging from f/2.8 to f/3.5 at the low end of general purpose lenses. Most advanced digital point-and-shoot cameras have f-numbers around 2.8 and can be manually set by the user.
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Step 3
Ensure your camera is set to the aperture priority mode. This allows you to adjust the aperture while the camera selects the correct corresponding shutter speed for you. Usually "AV" or "A" designates aperture priority mode.
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Step 4
Practice with aperture settings. Start with a higher aperture number like f/15 and then lower that number slowly for each subsequent photograph. The background is more blurred with every decrease in the f-number.
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Step 5
Remember that the more blurred you want the background, the lower your f-number should be. As you decrease the f-number, you increase the width of the aperture, which means you decrease the sharpness of the entire photograph. As you increase the f-number, you increase the focus of everything in the photograph.
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Step 6
Decide how blurred you want the background. If don't want the background to distract attention away from your main subject, use a lower f-number. If you take a picture of a person in front of something interesting, a higher f-number puts everything within the frame in focus.
