Bokeh
According to Wikipedia, Bokeh (derived from Japanese, a noun boke, meaning “blur” or “haze”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of point of light sources in an out-of-focus area of an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.
This past weekend, I got back into some of my explorations of abandoned buildings. There’s only so many shots you can take of empty hallways, so I decided to take a slightly different approach and use some bokeh techniques to get a different feel for my pictures. I took some time with my 50mm f/1.4, and opened up the aperture all the way. It gives a very tight focus on a small subject, and the rest of the image gets very fuzzy and out of focus. Here’s a couple of shots that I really like:
I also really like this shot, which is essentialy a “reverse bokeh”. I set the focus on the chair in the back of the room, and blew out the focus on the door frame, hopefully dragging the viewer into the middle of the picture.
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