Bokeh effect is a photographical technique where one element of the image is intentionally blurred. The subject of the photograph is kept in focus allowing the background to be blurred with points of light becoming blurred circles.
Bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means ‘haze’ or ‘blur’ and the official definition of the word translates as: “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.”.
This style of photography allows the focus to be kept on the subject making sure that the viewer concentrates on this area. Altering the Aperture Priority and setting it low allows for light to be collected by the camera to get the bokeh effect backgrounds. It also allows for a shallow depth of field so the subject is in focus and the background blurred.
In order to get this shot I positioned the toy a metre in front of the fairy lights as the original shots where the toy was closer to the lights left them too much in focus and did not give a pleasing bokeh effect. I originally shot the photographs using a 50mm lens but found when I moved to using a 300mm lens and zoomed in on the toy this gave me the effect I was looking for. The aperture was set at the lowest for this lens f4. In post production the photographs were cropped to remove any parts of the base and then either white or black vignettes added to enhance the focus on the image.
