Photo Lab 42 Bokeh

I am playing with Prairie Jill and Miriam. We are working our way through Steve Sonheim’s photography book(Creative-Photography-Lab-Self-Expression-Mixed-Media), lab by lab.

This week’s lab was Bokeh. I always thought bokeh was the lovely little circular or hexagons that form in a shallow DOF photo…but apparently it refers to any type of blur. In general, any “pleasing effect of out-of-focus areas in the photo”. This includes blur created by tilt-shift or lensbaby, motion blur, blur created by vaseline on the lens or a plastic sheet in front of the lens.

So I tried a few of these techniques.

1. Shallow DOF with my DSLR, which always creates lovely bokeh:

and

2. Motion blur by panning of Stewie in action, with my DSLR:

3. Attempts with my Samsung which gives only so-so blur in the background:

A close-up by cropping of another seedhead:

4. Tilt shift with my Samsung and Awesome Miniatures Pro app:

5. Blur through plastic wrap with my DSLR. Too much blur since there is no place in focus, but you can still see that the center of the photo is my cow-reading-a-newspaper statue:

Another fun lab…..can’t go wrong with bokeh!!