Creative Use of Bokeh in Photography

6 Helpful Techniques from Ian Plant

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What does “bokeh” mean?

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✤ Technically the word “bokeh” refers to the quality of the blur of out-of-focus parts of a photograph produced by a lens. But most photographers these days seem to use the term to refer to the blur itself.

✤ In this photograph of a chestnut-breasted coronet, the bokeh is the out-of-focus blurred orbs in the background. The orbs are actually sunlit tree leaves, but because I used a telephoto lens with a wide-open aperture, the leaves are rendered as abstract blurs instead.

1-Use points of light for your out-of-focus subjects

✤ The bokeh effect is most pronounced when you have points of light in the background. These bright highlights can be city lights at night, specular highlights on sunlit waves, or even sunlit leaves in a forest. This photo uses specular highlights on waves, backlit by the rising sun.

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Chesapeake Bay, USA. Canon EOS 20D, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens, ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/2500

second.

✤ To produce a strong bokeh effect, you need areas of your photograph that are very out of focus. For this image of the entrance to a theater, I used the closest focusing distance of my lens in order to render the entire image out of focus, producing a bokeh effect across the entire image frame.

✤ The lens’ widest aperture was used, f/2.8, to ensure minimal depth of field and prevent any part of the image from being rendered in focus. The intentional defocusing creates an abstract rendering of all visual elements.

2-The more out of focus, the better

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Minneapolis, USA. Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Tamron SP 15-30mm f/2.8 Di VC USD lens, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/25 second.

3-Shoot wide open for an optimum blurred bokeh effect

✤ By shooting wide-open (such as f/2.8 or f/4), you’ll create big, blurry bokeh blobs. A pleasing bokeh blur is easier to achieve with longer focal lengths (because they have shallower depth of field), but you can also achieve pleasing blurs with wide-angle lenses.

✤ No matter what lens you use, getting close to your subject is often a good strategy for optimizing the bokeh effect, which is what was done for this photo. In fact, this is so close that the bokeh orbs disappear, rendering as a blur of color instead.

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Grand Teton National Park, USA. Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF 24-70mm ‘f/2.8L USM lens, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/640 second.

4-Shoot stopped down for a more defined bokeh effect

✤ This selection allowed me to include specular highlights of sunlight reflected in the background water.

✤ A small aperture renders the bokeh orbs as smaller and more defined than if a wide-open aperture was used.

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Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Lens with Internal 1.4x Extender, 560mm, ISO 100, f/32, 1/200 second

5-Experiment with your position relative to your subject and background

✤ If you get really close to your subject, and the background is far away, then the bokeh effect will be more pleasing than if the background is relatively close.

✤ You should be able to easily see this effect through your camera viewfinder or Live View. This image of a ringed kingfisher was shot only ten feet away throwing the background pleasingly out of focus.

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Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM lens with Internal 1.4x Extender, ISO 1000, f/5.6, 1/1000 second

6-Include bokeh orbs to enhance the overall design of your photo✤ Don’t just add bokeh into

your photos and expect good results. You have to think critically about where you put the bokeh orbs, and how they effect your overall composition.

✤ This image was shot close and through some backlit pine needles in order to render them as colorful bokeh blurs and it allowed for a creative frame around the bison with the resulting orbs.

9Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm

f/4L IS USM lens, ISO 100, f/4, 1/400 second

So…

✤ “Bokeh can add color and a dash of impressionism to your photos. The creative use of out-of-focus highlights can considerably enhance your compositions. ”

Thanks to Ian Plant…Tamron Image Master

& Outdoor Photography Guide

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