![]() ![]() Unless an image’s background is white overall, it is best to make sure that the brightest area of the image is the subject’s face. This leads us to another important aspect of lighting. When taking portraits when there is harsh sunlight, it is easy to notice that the bokeh will be extremely harsh, and the highlights will always be blown. ![]() Aside from evenly distributing light on the subject, it spreads light equally over everything around including the background. ![]() ![]() The “Golden Hour” plays an important role in bokeh. The reason for this is because it is crucial in achieving beautiful images. The concept of the “Golden Hour” has been discussed to death and it will continue to be talked about. The 85mm range lends to the perfect balance between bokeh while simultaneously enabling the photographer interact with the subject. The recommended portrait lens is an 85mm on a full frame camera and 50mm on a camera with a cropped sensor. Here is an image taken by Rey using a D90 & 50 1.8d (A $125 lens). A few years before upgrading to the D800, I shot with a 50 1.8. Personally, I shoot most of my portraits using an aperture of f1.6 or f2 and my go-to lens is the 85 1.4g. There are no definite rules when choosing equipment, but some lenses lend to better bokeh. Shallower DOF results in a more creamy background.Įquipment is important when achieving the greatest bokeh. Additionally, the closer you are to your subject the thinner your depth-of-field. “More distance” means hundreds of feet, not five feet. It is important to remember that the more distance there is between a subject and the background, the more blurred the background will be. Utilizing a colorful location gives way for varying bokeh colors, which make an image exciting and engaging.ĭistance is key in achieving a more blurred and milky bokeh. Grassy areas usually allow for only one color in the bokeh: green. I find grassy areas, such as parks to be difficult when trying to achieve good bokeh. Urban areas usually have colorful things everywhere. Personally, I don’t have to think too hard when shooting in New York City. When planning out shoots its important to use locations that have good potential for bokeh. Here is a graph showing complimenting colors (Colors directly opposite are most complimenting): To compliment skin tones, they put blue color in the background. Using complementing colors makes the image more appealing. After thinking about it for a few days, I came to realize that blue complements yellow and people have a yellow/orange tone to their skin. About a year ago, while watching Dexter (great show), I noticed that on the tight headshots of the characters, there always was a blue tone in the bokeh. It’s important to remember the more blurred the bokeh is, the less distracting the bokeh and the more the subject is separated from the bokeh causing it to look 3D.īeing conscious to use colors for the bokeh that compliment the subject’s colors can take images to the next level. For the subject to really stand out and look three dimensional, the eye needs a foreground or background to compare the image to. Bokeh, both in the foreground and background, gives the illusion that the subject is 3D even though the image is, in fact, 2D. When looking at a photo without bokeh, the eye can’t register the foreground or background of the image because there are no separating “layers.” As a result, the image will look 2 dimensional and the subject won’t pop, making the image unappealing to the eye. (Images used in this article - Dani Diamond Photography) In order to see things as three dimensional, the human eye compares the foreground to the background of the subject, or what is in front and behind the subject. The best way to understand the purpose or the aesthetic value of bokeh is to comprehend how the human eye visualizes the three dimensions of length, width and height or how the eye see things as 3D. The first question I asked him was “how do photographers blur out the background and keep their subject sharp?” It was bokeh that attracted me to photography and to this day, melting away the background and separating it from my subject is still one of the most important things to me.īokeh, in laymen’s terms, is the appealing characteristic of an image’s blur or the undefined expanse of a photo. Three years ago, I picked up my good friend’s DSLR for the first time. ![]()
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