Bokeh Photography

Life would be very boring without hobbies. We would be like robots without feelings, colour-blind creatures or simply aliens on our own planet. Since childhood, we are used to particular daily activities: hobbies. A hobby gives us time to relax and enjoy our life. One can fill their spare time with relaxing activities such as playing games, reading novels, making dolls and so on. In fact, there is a very long list of hobbies and interests to suit our passion.

One hobby that has recently become popular is photography. Through social media, interest in photography has become something special. Everyone has started to show off their masterpieces on social media such as Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa and Instagram. People who share the same interest can now easily find inspirational photographs on the Internet. One can go to an art gallery regularly to get inspiration by seeing other people’s masterpieces as well.

Photography is a wide field. There is fashion photography, portrait photography, journalistic photography, macrophotography and so on. Moreover, there are many techniques to create an amazing photograph. One of those techniques is bokeh. In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image. Bokeh has been defined as ‘the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light’. However, differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting.

Bokeh is pretty similar to other types of blur. In portrait photographs, blur is the background area behind the subject of the photograph. In an ordinary camera, blur can be produced automatically by changing the settings, but this produces standard blur, which is common. However, bokeh is not just any blur. Commonly, a particular type of lens is needed to create a bokeh photograph. In this bokeh technique, the lens and aperture shape have to be adjusted in a way that the camera can create circle-shaped blur which is uniquely attractive to the eye.

This bokeh technique can be used in portrait photography. It is useful to capture a portrait or any other photograph with a particular subject in front and with the lights behind. For example, a portrait with a city lights background can be captured better with bokeh photography. However, the background is not only limited to lights. Any background can be produced as a bokeh photograph. It creates an out-of-focus background so the subject stands out.

As a beginner in photography, one can use a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflect) camera to produce a professional-looking bokeh photograph. You can use your phone camera as well and don’t need to buy expensive photography equipment.

The things you need are a camera and the perfect angle with the lights in the background. Moreover, a cup of creativity is needed to create an amazing bokeh masterpiece.