Columbine at the Huntington Library gardens, shot at f/4.5 to throw the background into bokeh. © John Corney A photograph I took of columbines at the Huntington Library gardens recently has such a beautiful bokeh effect that I thought I'd use it as an excuse to talk about bokeh today — what it is, where the word comes from, and how to get it in your own photographs. What Bokeh Actually Is The word bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け), meaning "blurred" or "haze." It started being used by photographers in the late 1990s to describe specifically the quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photograph — not just the fact that the background is blurred, but how aesthetically the blurring is rendered. Good bokeh is creamy, smooth, and pleasing. Bad bokeh is harsh, distracting, or busy. Two lenses can produce the same depth of field but very different bokeh. It's pronounc...
Comments