Bokeh
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
No, it’s not read “bou-keh” like bouquet, it’s read “boke”, like book. Bokeh, from Japanese “boke” meaning “blur”, is a photographic term referring to out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens.
Well, that’s basically all I know about bokeh. It creates a blurred effect in photos, and shifts narrows focus to a particular point-of-focus. It’s especially important when shooting in macro mode (close-ups of subjects) as it blurs the background and brings focus to the subject. Bokeh can be achieved by using a large aperture. The easiest way to get bokeh (at least with my camera, which has a max aperture of f/2.8) is when shooting with macro mode. Point at a close subject, but an angle where the background is filled with a distant subject.
Here’s a lovely photo from Wikipedia. Note that the lense used has a significant number of blades forming the aperture so that each point of light becomes a circular disc, rather than polygon shaped, jagged edges of the aperture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Josefina_with_Bokeh.jpg
One great example I found on how the bokeh can make a photo so much more interesting is this:
http://photo.net/mjohnston/column49/
You can’t just help but look at the blurred parts, wondering what the lady is looking at.
Hm, seems like I’m getting more and more interested with macro shots and blurry backgrounds. Anyway, check out some shots I took of Eu Hua’s lovely bookmark at my photos page.
