Bokeh blur effect - Photography

Bokeh is an interesting blur effect in DSLR photography. Most users new to the DSLR photography are not aware of the terminology. As a matter of fact, I myself didn't know what bokeh was, until one day I accidentally shot a photo with an interesting blur effect. The photo looked nice with the blurred lights during the night. Honestly speaking, it just happened to me while experimenting with different settings of my Nikon. I was just randomly trying out different combinations in various modes.

What followed was a bit of a research on the internet and lots of googling :) I came across this very helpful tutorial which helped me recreate the previous camera settings for a bokeh. After a bit of practicing I do feel that although the steps to create a bokeh seem quite simple at the first glance, it is infact quite tricky under various situations.

When you try to click a bokeh under low light conditions, it can be a bit tricky. Another tricky and challenging situation would be to try to click a bokeh of a city skyline at night from a boat or ship. We will look into this scenario in another post.

For now, lets just focus a bit on the bokeh. Check out a sample photo below to get an idea:

Bokehs can be extremely pleasing to the eye in stylish portraits. You could also use them as backgrounds and overlay text on top of it to create flyers, posters etc. In my next post on Bokeh, I'll specify some generic steps for recreating the camera settings and also some photos.