A quick 3 Easy Steps to Bokeh

If there is one 'technique' in photography I truly adore, it is Bokeh. An out of focus image with beautiful use of light and shape.

So I thought I would share a little on how I go about Bokeh.

1. Set your camera to Manual focus.

This will give you better control over your device and the strength of your 'blur' in the image

2. Next, I like to put my camera on AP or Manual. This will ensure a lovely aperture (depth of field) While one of my cameras has an awesome aperture count, the other doesn't quite. A large Aperture helps tremendously! 1.4 works beautifully but 3.5 will do just fine also.

3. When taking your photo, you need a good amount of distance between you and the light source. Focus in on your subject and use the manual focus to your advantage twisting the focus gradually to create the blurred effect. You can also achieve this by auto focus too, depending on the type of Bokeh you wish to achieve, or whether you want a certain effect.

You can begin to play with it, having a subject to focus on or to just capture lights.

Carefully select your subject. As you zoom into its detail, draw focus to the subject.

To get a more defined look, a larger aperture will achieve better results. This photo was taken with only a 3.5 aperture and I wanted it to blend with all the lights together.

Next, you could try adding shapes - hearts, stars etc. That will be a later post however ;)