Let's talk bokeh!

First off, what is bokeh?
By definition, bokeh is the blurred quality or effect seen in the out-of-focus portion of a photograph taken with a narrow depth of field.

Great right? Now the real quesiton,

how do I achieve bokeh?

The first and possibly the most important aspect of creating bokeh is

YOUR LENS

Depending on what you are wanting to create, depends on the settings of your piece of glass.

To achieve the creamy blurred background, you ultimately need a lens that goes to f1.4 - 2.8.

My main two lenses are the Nikon 50 f1.4 & Nikon 85 f1.8.

Along with your lens, the key to bokeh is separating your subject from your background. The further away, the more blur you'll achieve. The photos below are the perfect examples of how the combination of a lens set at 1.4 and separating your subject from the background creates that beautiful blurry bokeh.

With the photo on the left, the model is directly on top of the leaves, creating zero separation to create the bokeh. But with the model on the right, she was about 50 feet away from the trees in the back, allowing for the background to fall out of focus.

So what do you look for when wanting to create bokeh?

When I'm out on a session, I always look for where light is shining through trees or with night shots, street/car lights.
The lightest areas behind a subject are what will create the largest effect.

As much as I love a basic blurry background, what happens when you add a little

*SPICE*

Lensbaby Twist 60

If you've followed me for a while, the Twist 60 is by far my favorite lens for fun twisty bokeh. For this lens, the effect shows best with the techniques described above. The subject must have some distance from the background and setting the camera at the lowest aperture will give the more twist.

It also helps to have some texture behind your subject, for example, trees, or a brick wall.

Lensbaby Composer Pro II + Edge 50

This lens is a little more difficult in achieving bokeh, but when you nail it, the results are sooooo beautiful. I definitely try to use the Edge 50 more with city & car lights to create a miniature effect and focus in on my subject with the added light around them. With the Composer Pro II + Edge 50 being a manual lens, you definitely have to slow down to take time to decide where you want slice of focus to be and if the bokeh works for that framing.

Lensbaby Velvet 85

Lastly, the lens I never thought I would fall in love with for bokeh, Lensbaby Velvet 85. Being that I saw this as a soft focus lens, getting portraits sharp enough to look like it was unintentional was a turn off to me. But after putting the Velvet 85 through the test, I fell in love with the soft bokeh it creates. This lens is the exception to NOT put the aperture at the lowest setting for portraits. I found that around F2.8 - F4 is the sweet spot for portraits to still be in focus, but also retaining the blurry background that I bought the Velvet 85 for.

What is your favorite way to create bokeh?

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