Creating Bokeh and Why it's Important

Bokeh can enhance a photo artistically but there are other reasons why bokeh is an important tool. Let's first define bokeh and how it's used, then I'll show some examples of how I use bokeh. 

Bokeh is a term created in 1997 and basically refers to the out of focus area of the background of a photo. Modern cameras and smart phones have made bokeh easy to create and there are even programs like Luminar AI that will turn any portrait into a bokeh portrait.

Let's look at the origin of the word. Bokeh is a word with Japanese origins, defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light. ” The word comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means “haze” or “blur.” (The “h” was introduced to help English speakers pronounce the word correctly [BO - KEH].)

Bokeh creates wonderful artifacts in the image usually in circular or hexagonal shapes. This is caused by beams of light moving through the lens and passing through your aperture and on to your light sensor. The shape of the artifacts are directly related to the shape of your aperture. If the blades on your aperture are rendering a hexagonal shape, then the artifacts will render a hexagonal shape. These artifacts will be most visible when there are lights in the background. Christmas lights, city lights or any object with extremely high shine will make great bokeh candidates.

Follow these steps to create a bokeh image:

1) Use an extremely shallow depth of field, in other words, shoot with the lens wide open. Most pro lenses have a wide open aperture somewhere around ƒ 2.8 with many new lenses rendering f-stops of ƒ 2.0, ƒ 1.2 or even lower. The closer the aperture is set to wide open the better the bokeh effect will be.

2) Place the subject close to the camera lens and have distance between the subject and the background.

3) Look for locations with lights or shiny objects in the background. However, if you don't have lights or shiny objects in the background you'll still get a wonderful blur in the background but not the fabulous artifacts.

4) The longer the lens the better the bokeh effect, in fact, it's really hard to get great bokeh with a wide angle lens because they have such a deep depth of field, so stick to your longer zoom or telephoto lenses.

5) For shots using your camera phone, simply get close to the subject and focus on them. The effect can be amazing.

Below is an example of a model car with a Christmas tree in the background, you can clearly see the lights are displayed as hexagons.