I was recently asked to write a post about how to get those amazingly dreamy images with the blurred background, otherwise known as bokeh (pronounced boke-uh). Bokeh is Japanese for blur. It  is an important tool when telling a story in your images.  It draws your eye to the subject of the picture & creates a little something special in the background! Here is where I will attempt to get you started with the basics, the mastery part will be up to you!

WIDE APERTURE

The most important part of creating your bokeh lies with your aperture setting.  For the newbie, the aperture is the opening in the lens that controls the amount of light that makes it through the lens and shutter to the film/sensor.  The smaller the f number (or f-stop) the larger the opening. This is usually expressed as f/5.6, f/4, f/2.8, f/1.4, etc.  Typically the larger the aperture the larger the bokeh.  Fast lenses below f/2.8 like my Nikor 50mm 1.4 are ideal for shooting bokeh (and is the lens I use for most of my bokeh shots.)

That is not to say that one can not get great bokeh using lenses with a smaller maximum aperture like the typical kit lenses sold with most entry level DSLRs. The trick is to make sure you are using the largest aperture possible (smallest f number). To do this I recommend switching your camera into Aperture Priority mode (typically labeled “A” or “Av” on the program mode dial) and dialing in the smallest f number possible. With most kit lenses this will be f/3.5 or 4.

GET CLOSE TO YOUR SUBJECT

A shallow depth of field (DOF) , a necessary ingredient of bokeh,  is not only dependent on a wide aperture, but also the distance between your camera and your subject. The closer you are to your main focal point, the more shallow your background will appear, in turn creating more opportunity for some well-defined bokeh.

CREATE SOME DISTANCE FROM YOUR BACKGROUND

Just like the distances between your main focal point and your camera, the distance between your focal point and your background is important to bokeh as well. The farther your subject is from its background, the more bokeh you’ll get. For example, if you were in Golden Gate Park and you took a picture of your child standing on the beach with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background with a wide open apeture of say 1.8, you would still be able to see that it was the Golden Gate Bridge, but it would look fuzzy or blurred. However, if you took the same image on a boat in front of the Golden Gate Bridge using the same settings, it wouldn’t look quite as blurred because the distance between your subject and the bridge is much closer.

Below are some examples of how changing the apeture setting dramatically effects the bokeh in your image. All of these images were taken with my 50mm 1.4 lens, with the ISO set at 250. The only thing that changes is the apeture. I threw in a few of my dogs just because they make me smile! So grab your camera, switch it to the A or AV setting and click away. You will be amazed at the difference in your photographs when you start changing the way you use your apeture settings. Please share this with others who are wanting to step up their photography skills too!