This week’s exercise from “The Visual Toolbox” was to use bokeh in abstract. I won’t lie, I was pretty excited about this. I love seeing this effect in photos and have wanted to experiment with it a little bit more. It was a little chilly here this weekend and I have been super busy so I wasn’t able to get out to get the streetlight shots I wanted. Instead I was able to set up some good bokeh-producing shots in my kitchen.
The way to get this type image out of your camera requires a high contrast scene with spots of intense highlights against a generally dark environment and for your camera to be out of focus. The further out of focus you are the bigger your spots of bokeh will become. The easiest way to do this is to set your aperture to its widest setting to achieve the narrowest depth of field possible and then turn your focus ring until the bokeh comes into view and looks just right.
My husband and I have only a small obsession with coffee so these images were made by setting up our silver tea kettle, a couple frothing pitchers, a turkish coffee pot, and a couple french presses on my stove top and turning on the stove hood lamp in order to get some direct light bouncing off all that silver. The effect was pretty fun.
