Vickie, for some reason I thought you were shooting with a point and shoot, but, now I don't see where you said that or not. You can control the amount of background blur (the depth of field) by changing the aperture setting (the F-stop). The larger the aperture, the more blur you'll get. Such as F5.6 as opposed to F11. That will give you what's called a "shallow depth of field." The higher the F-stop number, the smaller the aperture. The smaller aperture, the fuller the depth of field.
It helps me to remember it this way---lower/smaller number---low/smaller depth of field, higher/bigger number---bigger/wider depth of field.
Hope that helps!
