Bokeh

A few weeks ago, one of the prompts for Scavenger Hunt Sunday was bokeh and I used a photo similar to this one:

I was very excited for the prompt because I love bokeh, and even though the photo I ended up using was one of the first I took that week, I enjoyed taking pictures of bokeh the whole next week.

Water in the sun makes a particularly easy subject. Though I wanted to get more clear hexagons then I ended up with, I had fun trying with different focal lengths and apertures.

The challenge to me was not to find bokeh, but how to make the picture more intriguing than a photo of glowing circles (though those photos are also gorgeous to me.)

So I tried framing, another prompt from previous weeks and exploring with your camera theme.  Ummm, maybe, but I ended up with a photo of Sunflower because really documenting my children and life is what originally caused me to pick up a camera.

Is it my fault that the lighting and bokeh and not my beautiful daughter is what makes this photo one I want to keep?

But then so many people on the hunt that week admitted they didn't know how to capture bokeh.  Some were limited by their equipment (it is possible to capture bokeh with automatic point and shoots--I believe--but I never have.)  Others had the capability of setting manual settings, but didn't know what to do.  It made me sad, because I remembered being there only 7 months before.  I loved photos with blurry backgrounds, selective focus, and those beautiful bits of pretty glowing circles...but I had no clue how to get them.

As I started going through My 3 Boybarians 31 Days to a Better Photo Series and started shooting in manual, I started to sometimes capture that blurry or creamy background and sometimes even the more elusive bokeh.  I even blogged about that exciting day when Sunflower was in focus and the background was blurry.

SOOC as I didn't know how to edit at all when I first posted this photo

At that point I understood depth of focus and that at certain distances and wider apertures the background would be blurry, but how light played into bokeh was a whole 'nother ball game.   I did discover it was easier for me to capture bokeh when I was using my longer 55-200mm lens than my 18-55mm kit lens.  One day, I Heart Faces posted an article "Creating Bokeh with a Kit Lens" that explained why and things started to fall into place for me.

Not that I can always get bokeh--using the more exact definition of bokeh being out of focus points of light--but I can usually get a blurry background...usually...and if the background has points of light or light bouncing off objects in such away as to look like little lights, then I can get bokeh.  Which means I can experiment even more.

When one doesn't have something they want in focus, manual un-focus can be used to make bokeh.

And if at times I get a little discouraged because my bokeh looks a little more like really bad focus than intentional art, I try to remember how little I knew 7 months ago, how exciting a blurry and ugly background was.

And I remind myself that a LOT of the fun of photography to me is the journey and the learning.  If every shot was perfect every time, what more would I have to learn?  I don't want to take 500 pictures and dislike them all, but when I take a photo and know...this is it, I don't need to take more, I still do.  Because what is the fun of getting out the camera to take one picture and what will I miss if I stop too soon?

My husband would argue, what is the point of having 50 pictures of the same thing?  And I do delete a lot of my attempts.  But each photo represents the journey, the experiment, the learning that I am doing.  Next year what will my Ferris Wheel photos look like?  I hope better, if I have to go to the fair.

The spider web above was taken a little underexposed and I had to use manual focus to get a lock on the web instead of the trees behind, but I knew there was more to capture.  I could see it with my own eyes.  It took several angles, manual focus, and several attempts before I captured the glorious creation I was beholding--almost.  (Though while I was trying to capture the rainbow shimmer, I actually really like the almost black and white web, also.)

Granted it would probably be a better shot if the details of the spider was more in focus, but I cannot get myself to care about the spider.

So if you are feeling like I did--I love bokeh, but I'll never be able to do it...don't despair.  If I can learn, so can you.  You don't even have to use manual...it is probably easier to use manual...but aperture priority would allow you to set your lens to your widest aperture and have the camera do all the work of exposure.  Then, as the I heart faces tutorial says, get close to your subject with the background a ways back and watch the magic happen.  I even have a friend who loves the background blurry and doesn't understand settings at all, but she found if she set her point and shoot to close-up and then got in the face of her child (her words) she got some magical photos, too.

Well, I didn't intend to make this a tutorial because there is probably a lot I still don't understand; I would never want to mislead someone.  Plus the people who expressed interest in learning about bokeh aren't reading my blog on a random Monday.  I just wanted to show the pretty bokeh pictures I took in the last few weeks that didn't make it into Scavenger Hunt Sunday--they would have made my hunt way too long!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

My husband is so sweet.  I said Friday I wouldn't be able to do Scavenger Hunt Sunday these week because I hadn't taken any pictures yet, and he said, "what are we doing Saturday afternoon?  Can't you do it then?"  He knows how much pleasure taking pictures gives me.  This was particularly kind of him since he knew we were spending 4 hours on Saturday handing out door hangers to invite people to a marriage conference our church is putting on in October.  (We had to help because I'm part of the planning committee; plus we thought it would be a good service to do as a family--no knocking just hanging the fliers on doorknobs.)  So anyway, Scavenger Hunt Sunday really is my favorite photo challenge, and this week is no exception even if I did it all in a few hours instead of spread out over the week.

Street Photography and From a Distance:

This is a street (no interesting people out on a rainy/overcast day on quiet residential streets) and I was watching them from a distance as they walked back from leaving the last flier.  SnapDragon and Sunflower had decided they'd done enough walking so I waited on the corner with them and took pictures for the hunt.

Since I combined the two prompts into one photo, I thought I could do a bonus "From a Distance" from our day at the lake a few weeks ago.

They were quite a distance away when I looked up from reading my book to take their pictures as they came back in.  Oak, SnapDragon, and Sunflower in one kayak.  Huckleberry all on his own.  (I played with graduated filters in LR3 today, thus the funky colors.)

Sunday:

"Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another."  Hebrews 10:24-25a (Not to say everyone has to go to church on Sunday, but it is what Sunday is to me ever since I was born.)

Liquid:

They call it liquid sunshine, but it does not uplift my mood the same way warm, dry sunshine does.  But it does leave lots of pretty water drops to photograph!  The rain is back.  Really, it feels like it never left?

Behind:

I always thought that if I was Ramona Quimby and sat behind Susan I would not be able to resist pulling her curls a little to see them spring back.  Now that my daughter has those kind of curls naturally (a little less springy today) I find myself with her sitting on my lap and me gently tugging, "Boing! Boing!"

Be sure to check out all the other creative interpretations for this week's hunt!

Week 36 good to WOW Edit Night Shots

I am discovering that it is much quicker and easier to edit in Lightroom3 but the details are a lot less interesting to share.  These three sliders and a curve adjustment--flat tone.  Done.  Oh well.  It is still very interesting to see how little has to be adjusted to change a whole photo.

Except, nothing changed my bubble shot.  Well, funky black and whites, but really the basic sliders didn't really do anything to enhance the photo.  I finally landed on using a preset "Details in the shadows" that I downloaded from Adobe's site.  It appears to basically be a tone curve--high contrast.

For the next one I did a flat tone curve, blacks +3, vibrance +25, clarity +50, and contrast +25, plus a slight crop.

Then for this next one I did fill light +3 and blacks + 5--I'm not sure these sliders don't actually counteract each other a little, so who knows if it was useful.  then Contrast +25, Clarity +50, and Vibrance +25 (This is LR general punch preset).  I also added +9 to saturation.  Then on the sign only I used a brush + exposure and brightness (I don't remember the exact numbers).  I wanted the sign to be a little more readable and stand out a little more.  Then I did not like how the one post of the sign is not straight in the photo, so I played around with Lens Corrections, the manual setting.  I couldn't get it exactly right as I don't really understand how it works and my spacial understanding is severely lacking, but I landed on +5 distortion, -7 vertical, -11 horizontal.  I could get the post a little straighter with more tweaking, but I started losing the other post completely from the photo--which defeated the point.  The photo is also cropped.

Finally the last one, which appeared to be most people's favorite photo. All I did here is crop a little (I thought the light post on the left was a bit distracting), blacks +6, General Punch preset, and saturation +11.  I do like color.  The sky was really intense that night.

We probably should go back again, but without the kids and with a tripod.  Maybe next year!

Finally I've finished my post and I can go look at everyone else's edits!  Also, go read up and watch the video on noise reduction.  Fascinating to learn it should be done at the end; I always assumed it should come first.  Maybe that is why I haven't been happy with my attempts.  I didn't feel like noise reduction was necessary for the above photos, but I do have some photos that can use it!