Thursday, February 10, 2011

Bokeh

Bokeh pictures are so fun, probably because they're so easy.  You can take some really elegant portraits with bokeh in the background, but I didn't have any subjects when I took these pictures, so it's just straight-up bokeh! (for the definition of bokeh, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh)
Bokeh is basically any part of a picture that is blurred because it is out of focus, but the best bokeh is when you get those big, lovely, ethereal dots in the background.   In my limited experience, I've found that the best way to get that is using Christmas tree lights.  Luckily, I have a string of white tree lights hanging on my walls, and a string of colorful lights around my mirror that you'll see in some of my pictures.  To get bokeh, all you have to do is make your camera focus on something close to the lens and use a shallow depth of field.  Here are some examples.


Here, I was focusing on one single light from the string.  See how the bokeh makes what would normally be a boring picture of a Christmas tree light into a pretty cool picture?
  I love it when the bokeh dots overlap...

This is what I believe was called "radial blur" which I learned in photography class.  You focus on a point, and using a fairly slow shutter speed (I believe mine here was 1/10 second) as you take the picture you quickly twist your lens to make everything in the picture go whoosh!

4 comments:

Julia said...

Those are so pretty! To answer your question on making pictures bigger- all you do is click on the picture after you've uploaded it, then the sizes and caption area should come up underneath it. Choose your size small, medium, large, or xlarge. I use xlarge because I like my pictures HUGE! Hope this helps!

Katrina said...

Oh, great! Thanks!

simplicity said...

You take great pictures Trina!

Katrina said...

Thank you!