The Magic of the Bokeh: Learn How to Create Wonderful Bokehs

The Magic of the Bokeh

Jana Mänz und Dr. Susan Brooks-Dammann

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction

2. Bokeh - Basics

3. The Abstract Bokeh

3.1. Camera Settings

3.2. Exposure Bracketing with Aperture Stops

4. First Steps: Set-Up for a Bokeh

4.1. About the Layout

4.2. The Preparation

4.3 The Aperture

5. Bokehs in Nature Photography

6. How we See

7. Playing with Lights

8. The Sense and Nonsense of Bokehs

9. Bokeh Gadgets

10. The Faux Bokeh: Playing with Photoshop

11. Exercises with Bokehs

For beginners:

For advanced users:

12. Usefull Links

13. Glossary

Imprint

1. Introduction

In the search of a name for the magical soft optical blur in the background of photographs, it was the Japanese who were the first to be successful.

Boke respectively boke-aji is, what they call the blur in photographs. Literally translated bokeh means mist, blur or even senility (mental blur). In the end, Bokeh prevailed as photographic term, and by the middle of the last century it distributed into the Western world.

Bokeh as the name for the blurriness refers to the aesthetic quality of the blurriness in pictures, which means how the bokeh is perceived and felt by the observer. The level of aesthetic of a bokeh cannot be measured. It only depends on the subjective perception. We can use the bokeh in a picture to improve its aesthetic quality. Though, bokehs are not always an  enrichment in photography. They can have a disturbing effect if they distract from the motive or if the shape of the bokeh is perceived as less appealing.

Often the bokeh is equated with the appearance of bright highlights in the background of pictures which transform into blurry overlapping circles of light. However, the term bokeh describes the blurriness of the background in general, whether or not highlights exist in the picture.

Therefore the repeated discussions about the bokeh in different photography-forums are justified. Unfortunately these discussions mainly focus on the technical level. The participants of these discussions heatedly argue about which lens creates the most beautiful bokeh.

We even find explanations about the physics of the bokeh in literature. Though, it only helps partly, if one does not exactly know how to compose a bokeh, not by coincidence, but on