Tuesday, December 22, 2009

shaped bokeh



i was on a photography board and came across a link with a unique way of manipulating bokeh (the blurry, often background, parts of a photo). here is the tutorial.

after seeing the instructions, i decided to whip up a lens hood and see if it would work. i chose a 1 inch gingerbread man hole punch and made a hood out of black construction paper to fit over my 50 mm 1.8 lens. it took me a bit to figure out how to shoot with it on, but i aimed it at my christmas tree and tested the technique. as long as the subject appears blurry in the viewfinder, the bokeh will work. the lights look like little gingerbread men!

i'd show you a picture of my lens hood but it is one shoddy piece of work. instead, check out my sample images and those in the link. i'm sure there a few random uses for something like this. either way, i found it interesting and am still a bit confused as to how it works.



2 comments:

Unknown said...

aww, cute gingerbread men! I like the one on the website with the dog in the foreground...you should try that with the boys and the gingerbread men tree in the background.

Thomas said...

I'm totally confused about how it (as well as the rest of physics) works. But those gingers are adorable!