Bokeh!

So you are probably wondering "WTF is bokeh?" yeah its a weird word... Well bokeh is basically the blurred part of an image, like when your taking a picture of someone and the background blurs out, yeah that's basically bokeh. There is another step to it and that's basically the artistic part, usually lights come out round when blurred in the background and that's because your lens is round. So what I'm going to show you is how to manipulate your bokeh.

What you will need is:

-Your camera and lens (I was switching between an 18-55 and a 55-200 I found the 18-55 better only because i was doing this in my room)

-Lights (city or Christmas which is what i used)

-paper

-tape

-scissors or a paper punch but a small one 

Thats it! Yup this is something you can probably go out and do right now. So first what i did was set up my lights, I just hung icicle lights in my room please ignore the yellow duct tape on my window, there's a gigantic crack :

Next I set up my camera, i took my paper and punched a hole in it and fit on my lens. I used painters tape to attach it to the lens. Make sure you zoom your lens before you tape it otherwise you will get it stuck when you try to zoom it in. 

The longer lenses do work better but I was shooting in my room so I wasn't able to back up far enough to make it work. Also longer lenses get you sharper lines. You can also cut your own design which is what I had to do with the star. 

For my camera settings I had my ISO at 350 my f-stop at 5.6 (for the blur) and my shutter at 1/50 so it will catch the light better. You will want to put your camera on manual focus because you wont be able to focus on much and you want it to be out of focus to create the shapes.

Also be careful with how big you make your shape cutout because it can end up like this. Which is pretty cool but not necessarily what we are going for here.









Last you can use this technique with objects in the foreground. Now mine didn't come out like I wanted because like I said I didn't have very much room to work with. So keep in mind you will want a lot of space if you want your shapes to come out completely. But in lieu of Singles Awareness Day I did this little thing :D

Don't be afraid to mix it up and make a kaleidoscope out of your shapes and play with it, or use multi-colored lights which unfortunately I didn't have to try but imagine this baby with multi-colors! 

I hope you have learned something and don't be afraid to try new things! I know I am definitely going to try this in a future shoot! If you have any requests at what you want me to do just let me know, if I don't know how to do it I will definitely learn how!