Welcome to our P52! This project is designed to get you out with your camera once a week in a meaningful way. Each week I will post a prompt for you to consider. The prompts are merely suggestions, and you are free to shoot off topic if you wish. All images posted must be taken by you, be safe for work, and be taken with this project in mind. Please do not post archive photos. For a further discussion of the guidelines, please refer to this thread, and you can find the previous weeks linked there if you missed them. Feel free to join in at any time of the year, and you may go back to missed weeks if you still wish to participate.
Week 50 | Bokeh
With two weeks to go until Christmas, it’s time for something festive. I’ve tried really hard all year not to have themes that were overly specific to a celebration or holiday. I realize that some of you may not celebrate any of the December holidays, but that does not preclude you from finding things to photograph. Opportunities abound with or without twinkle lights.
This week we are going to shoot scenes for bokeh. Most people define bokeh as just the round circles we get when we shoot wide open with some sort of light source behind our subject. However, the technical definition of bokeh is “the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens.” It actually doesn’t even matter if there are lights in the background, any scene is capable of having bokeh if the depth of field is shallow enough. MR member @bunnspecial wrote a good article about bokeh a couple of years ago with some great examples.
In essence, this is a corollary lesson to the Shallow Depth of Field lesson we had at the beginning of the year. But instead of working solely to throw the background out of focus, see how different lenses produce different types of backgrounds; are areas that go to circles full circles throughout the frame, or do they turn to cat’s eye shaped towards the edges? Does the background have a slight twist to it? Are color transitions smooth throughout? Any other qualities you can describe about a background? Do you have one lens that you love more than others for the background it produces?
For me, I think my all time favorite lens (at present at least) is my Voigtlander 58mm f/1.4. The background makes a very slight twist similar to a vintage Helios, I love how it flattens the background almost like a telephoto when used wide open, and I personally like the shape of the specular highlights and that they are not perfect throughout the frame. Others value consistent shaping throughout, and many very expensive lenses are designed that way.
For those of you embracing the holiday season, finding an area Christmas lights in the background is a great way to experiment, whether indoors or out. If you prefer something less seasonal then cityscapes, trees, mountains, well, anything really, can be made into a beautiful background when shooting wide open.
Week 50 | Bokeh
With two weeks to go until Christmas, it’s time for something festive. I’ve tried really hard all year not to have themes that were overly specific to a celebration or holiday. I realize that some of you may not celebrate any of the December holidays, but that does not preclude you from finding things to photograph. Opportunities abound with or without twinkle lights.
This week we are going to shoot scenes for bokeh. Most people define bokeh as just the round circles we get when we shoot wide open with some sort of light source behind our subject. However, the technical definition of bokeh is “the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens.” It actually doesn’t even matter if there are lights in the background, any scene is capable of having bokeh if the depth of field is shallow enough. MR member @bunnspecial wrote a good article about bokeh a couple of years ago with some great examples.
In essence, this is a corollary lesson to the Shallow Depth of Field lesson we had at the beginning of the year. But instead of working solely to throw the background out of focus, see how different lenses produce different types of backgrounds; are areas that go to circles full circles throughout the frame, or do they turn to cat’s eye shaped towards the edges? Does the background have a slight twist to it? Are color transitions smooth throughout? Any other qualities you can describe about a background? Do you have one lens that you love more than others for the background it produces?
For me, I think my all time favorite lens (at present at least) is my Voigtlander 58mm f/1.4. The background makes a very slight twist similar to a vintage Helios, I love how it flattens the background almost like a telephoto when used wide open, and I personally like the shape of the specular highlights and that they are not perfect throughout the frame. Others value consistent shaping throughout, and many very expensive lenses are designed that way.
For those of you embracing the holiday season, finding an area Christmas lights in the background is a great way to experiment, whether indoors or out. If you prefer something less seasonal then cityscapes, trees, mountains, well, anything really, can be made into a beautiful background when shooting wide open.
