Whenever this topic comes up it reminds me of the song lyrics "I say potato and you say pototo, I say tomato and you say tomoto." Whether you pronounce it like a bunch of flowers or "boke-uh" it is used to describe the quality of the blurry parts of a photo.
Bokeh is rendered by the lens, not the camera. Different lenses render bokeh differently due to their design. Some lenses do a better job at it than others.
Bokeh is rendered by the lens, not the camera. Different lenses render bokeh differently due to their design. Some lenses do a better job at it than others.
Purely by chance this week, I grabbed a shot of one of our hens standing on her favorite rock overlooking the horse paddocks. It was late in the day, and it gets dark under the trees where she is located, but light still filters from the trees off in the distance. At the point where I knelt to take this photo, our coop motion light came on and illuminated Amelia in the darkness of the tree cover. You will notice the bokeh more to her right because there is still reflected light in that area.
I took this photo of Barney on a more overcast day as he was hiding under a lawn chair while pretending he was one of the dogs. He loves to play with our dogs in the yard and acts just like one of them. While not as bright and reflective, you can still see a nice bokeh over his head and to the left as bits of light are reflected back to the lens.
There are certainly some good points technically that you can apply to capture bokeh. Since bokeh is influenced by how close the subject is to your lens and/or how far the subject is from the background, experimenting with different lenses is the only way to know what type of bokeh you can achieve.
My final image is of happy Danny. Here I have embellished whatever bokeh was in the photo with some manufactured (brushed on) bokeh and light reflections.
There are certainly some good points technically that you can apply to capture bokeh. Since bokeh is influenced by how close the subject is to your lens and/or how far the subject is from the background, experimenting with different lenses is the only way to know what type of bokeh you can achieve.
My final image is of happy Danny. Here I have embellished whatever bokeh was in the photo with some manufactured (brushed on) bokeh and light reflections.
Join me in exploring what others in the blog circle have done with the bokeh theme this week. Start with Kathie Ono of Ono Pet Photography in Fairhope, Alabama. Check for the link at the end of each blog. There are quite a few of us in this week's circle, which means more fun, and more great photos to see! Have a wonderful weekend!
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