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The Power of Bokeh: A Guide to Photography

Use the bokeh effect to create more depth in your photos and highlight points of light.

Anyone with an interest in photography will, sooner or later, come across the term ‘bokeh’. Bokeh is a Japanese word which translates as ‘blur’ (or ‘haze’ or ‘dementia’). In photography, bokeh refers to the appearance and effect of out-of-focus areas in an image – more specifically, how points of light are rendered in the out-of-focus areas.

A hand is holding a camera lens through which a city can be seen in the background.
Lenses that allow you to open the aperture very wide – and which therefore have a high light intensity – are particularly well suited to taking photographs with bokeh.

Creating bokeh is relatively simple. It works with any camera that allows you to adjust the aperture manually. To achieve a shallow depth of field, you need to use a wide aperture, such as f/2.8 or an even smaller f-number.

A man smiles at the camera. In the background, small lights can be made out, blurred.
The classic bokeh shot: the face in the foreground is in the plane of focus, with the eyes in focus, whilst the lights behind are rendered out of focus.

As well as the lens and the aperture, the distance between the subject and the background also plays a role. The further away the background is from the subject, the more blurred it appears and the more pronounced the bokeh is.

Bokeh in nature

A field of poppies. The flowers in the background are only faintly visible.
Au lieu de l'agitation en arrière-plan que ces centaines de fleurs auraient inévitablement créée, le photographe a ici opté pour un flou apaisant.

Bokeh can also be used to add interest to other types of photographs, such as landscapes, still lifes and macro shots. When taking a photograph, you decide what to focus on – and therefore which parts of the image should be deliberately blurred. In our example image, the field of poppies seems to stretch on forever. Thanks to the blurring, the eye can focus calmly on just a few flowers and buds.

Bokeh in the foreground

A view from the shore, through the purple flowers growing there, of a lake in a wood in the sunshine.
The flowers in the foreground provide the image with additional structure; as they are out of focus, the photograph also gains a sense of depth.

By deliberately creating a blurred foreground – in this case using flowers positioned very close to the camera – the photograph takes on a three-dimensional quality; without this, it would have been nothing more than a rather ordinary picture. The technique is quite simple: when taking the photograph, select a wide aperture (a small f-number, e.g. f/2.8) and deliberately set the focus further back in the frame. It’s just like taking a portrait, where you focus on the eyes with a wide aperture to blur the background – only the other way round.

A work of art created from bokeh

A bridge lit up at night. The lights are visible only as blurred points of light.
When the city begins to light up, bokeh enthusiasts are at their best – here, completely out of focus during the blue hour.

With a wide aperture and without autofocus, you can capture truly special images – especially at night. After all, lights outside the plane of focus provide the best backdrop for beautiful bokeh. In these shots, nothing is intentionally in focus – and yet, with the right subject, you can recognise or at least guess what it is. Here, it’s the Manhattan Bridge in New York. This works best when the lights outline the shape of the subject – whether it’s an illuminated Christmas tree or a city skyline.

Creative effects with bokeh

A night-time photograph featuring points of light arranged in the shape of a heart.
With a homemade aperture, you can easily create your own bokeh effect – the sharply focused parts of the image are not affected by it.

Bokeh can take on various shapes and sizes, depending on the lens and the aperture setting chosen. The shape of the bokeh is determined by the shape of the aperture blades in the lens – usually circular or hexagonal. A popular creative technique involves taking a photograph with a wide aperture through a cut-out in a piece of card that would otherwise cover the lens. Cut a circle out of card that is the same diameter as the lens. Then cut a heart (or another shape) out of the centre of the card and attach it to the front of the lens.

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