Photography Tutorials « A Canadian in Italy

Day 7: Photography Fun

07 Nov 2010 6 Comments

by eloradaphne in NabloPoMo, photography, Photography Tutorials Tags: Na.Blo.Po.Mo, photography, shaped bokeh

Most of you know I have a passion for photography, and I am always more than happy to explore fun new adventures and methods. One I’ve been meaning to experiment with for a loooong time was shaped bokeh. I desperately tried to do it with my P&S but to no avail, you simply don’t have the right lens or control to do bokeh properly, much lass make the shaped stuff I was after!

Before I go on to tell you the tale of my endeavors I guess you should know what bokeh is exactly. Bokeh is the blur caused by the lens when there is light behind the subject and this is out of focus. It is very nice because it helps make the subject pop out more, and recently it has become part of a style of photography where people just take pictures of out of focus lights. As soon as I got my hands on the DSLR I had fun experimenting many things, including bokeh, and today, as part of my R&R plan (going well btw) I decided to try my hand at shaped bokeh.

I have read tutorials and seen little videos and stuff about this and decided to give it a try. I followed this tutorial here. My first attempt failed miserably. The shape was too small. Then I made it too big. Then I got it right, but off-centre (with the stars I never quite got it right as you can see below). Then I said one last try and bang! I got it, with the hearts. Ahhhh…. it took me nearly three hours of experimentation but at last I got a few good images out of the deal. Now I just have to find more subjects to be my victims