More specifically, the edges of its out-of-focus light are not harsh or overly sharp and, if circles of blurred light are created in the image, they are uniformly illuminated and, hopefully, as round as possible. It adds an element of beauty and does not distract from the subject or overall composition. Good bokeh is often described in subjective terms, but pleasing bokeh is just that-pleasing to the viewer. The concept of bokeh is, again, debated fiercely in some photography circles. This is a very common practice in portraiture, but what exactly is “good” bokeh and how is it created? Using extremely shallow depth of field, photographers can place focus on just the eyes (or even on one eye) while the other facial features, the hair, and anything else in the foreground or background will be progressively out of focus. With a blurred background or even blurred items in the foreground on the side of a frame, the viewer’s attention will be directed to the in-focus aspects of the image, normally the face and eyes. Bokeh in Portraitureīokeh is an effective tool in portrait photography. In portraiture, the aspect in focus is usually the face of the subject or even just the eyes, while the rest of the frame is in progressively softer focus. Shallow depth-of-field focusing is when one aspect of the image is in focus and the rest is slightly blurred. Think, for example, of a well-lit image of a person in front of distant mountains, in which the person and the mountains remain in focus. In a wide depth-of-field image, everything is in focus, from the items in the foreground to the primary person or subject of the photo, to the background. When we focus on a subject within our frame we can control how much of the overall image-foreground to background-is in focus. Bokeh is most often noticed when points of light, either direct or reflected, are blurred and create a dappling effect in the background of an image, but bokeh is more than just soft spots of light, and the quality of bokeh is a product not only of light and photography technique, but of the type and quality of the lens one uses.īefore we can discuss bokeh, it’s important to understand the idea of depth of focus or, as it’s more commonly referred to, depth of field. It is not simply something not in focus, it is a product of shallow depth of field and can be quite beautiful on its own, but also lends to the beauty and effectiveness of the overall composition. Bokeh is a word that carries a lot of weight in modern photography circles and can, surprisingly, breed heated conversations, but what does it really mean and how does it apply to portrait photography? As an introduction, consider the word-which is derived from the Japanese term for “blur” or “haze”-to mean the aesthetic quality of the out-of-focus parts of an image surrounding an in-focus subject.

Bokeh photo