Day 20 :: Bokeh

Yesterday was day 20 of the 30 Day Photography Challenge, and the challenge is Bokeh. Bokeh is a Japanese word that has been adopted as the term for the out-of-focus area of a photograph, usually created by sources of light and color behind the subject. I’ve never tried to do bokeh on purpose before. This was a lot of fun. I tried it in 2 ways. First, (above), I used a small aperture number (ƒ1.8) (with a large opening) for the depth of field, and then I played with my shutter speed, and my manual focus, to get the circles in the image above. The second idea I wanted to try, was with a “bokeh filter”. This is a lot of fun.

So I made a filter out of bristol board since I couldn’t find black card stock. I punched a hole in the middle of the filter using a scrapbooking punch. (A friend of mine had a bunch I was able to borrow but this one came out best).

And then I played with a flashlight that the kids use in the hallway that hangs on our closet door, (so they can see their way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as we don’t have any plugs to plug in a night light), and got this cool image of the lights turned into snow flakes. Bokeh is a lot of fun! I definitely want to play around more with this.