Mad About You, Bokeh!

Salut everybody.

Now I know why sometimes when I see certain photographs, it looks flat and no attraction at all. Why is that? The answer is Bokeh. Bokeh plays important role in photography. In fact, that is the power of a photograph (in my humble opinion). Perhaps some people might have a different feel in viewing photographs but to me, it is one of the most powerful things to attract your eyes to look and stare at it and enjoy the image apart from lighting and moments. Bokeh is not simply created in a photograph. You need a tool in order to do that. A specific tool is required and not cheap to begin with. It is the lens that makes certain photographs look extraordinary. Let me brief a little bit about it.

I assume you already know what is aperture and how it works especially for those who have SLR or DSLR. In a nutshell, bokeh is determined by aperture you set. The bigger the aperture, the more bokeh you will get. The smaller the aperture, the less bokeh you see. For instance, if you have 85mm f/1.8 lens and open the aperture to the biggest/widest which is f/1.8, you will absolutely get amazing bokeh unlike smaller aperture like f/16 for example, you will get everything sharp in the picture. Smaller aperture normally suits landscape photography better.

Theoritically, it is rather difficult to understand and imagine what it means by bigger and smaller aperture for those whom are never get involved in photography. So, to be fair I will show you some examples.

Here is one example of big aperture (picture above). Just look at the foreground and background. It makes the subject really stand out from the image. Also, it helps you to get rid of distracted background that could possibly disturb your eyes when looking at the image.

Now, the picture above is an example of small aperture. You can see everything is in focus. However, you may see some photographers also apply f/16 (small aperture) for portrait photos. That would be just fine and the photo just as stunning as others. It all depends on your creativity. There’s no right or wrong in photography because beauty is very subjective. As long as it looks good in your eyes and makes you happy hee.

So there you go. A little bit of explanation about bokeh. Thanks for reading.

Faris