When I began photography, my first goal was to photograph something with a soft blurry background behind it. I had no idea that was called bokeh. Now Sofia is asking us to show our bokeh images, and I’m thinking it’s a good thing I learned how to do it!

Actually, I love photographing flowers with bokeh.

I don’t do usually portraits, but sometimes I can catch one with a bokeh background. This one, of a dog looking up at someone, happened to be taken at Sutter Creek.

Although this one wasn’t candid, it did end up with a slight bokeh. This was taken of my chiropractor, Heather Rosenberg, DC for her monthly newsletter. If you live near Roseville, CA, she’s the best!

Although I prefer to do close ups with a macro lens, whatever lens you have will work. Sometimes a background ends in bokeh even though you’re not intending it to.

Here I was just trying to capture the changing leaf colors with an 18-55mm lens and ended up with a nice background.

In this photo, I was trying to get underneath the mushroom to capture its folds and details with my 18-55mm. (I was too lazy to go back to the car for my macro lens.) Again, I ended up with a nice bokeh.

Sofia mentioned bokeh having a speckled look. I’ve found that water lends itself to that. I think I’ve shown this leaf before. I took the picture after the garden was watered and the drops gave the image a great speckled look.

Sometimes I carry a water bottle with me sprinkle the flowers before I photograph them to get a speckled effect. I didn’t have to do that with this image.

Thank you Sofia for a fun challenge that is dear to me. Again, I love closeup and macro photography. Thanks again to John for inviting us to celebrate his birthday with him last week. I will be leading next week’s challenge. Remember to link Sophia’s challenge to your reply post and use the Lens-Artists tag.

 If you would like to participate weekly in our Lens-Artists Challenge, we have easy to follow instructions. Just click this link and join us: https://photobyjohnbo.wordpress.com/about-lens-artists/

33 thoughts on “Lens Artists Challenge #194: Bokeh”

  1. Beautiful bokeh selections, Anne! I love this dog image, she/he looks just like my Ernie who is one year old. 🙂 I love the mushroom image and the water drops especially!

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    1. Thanks Tracy! Dogs show pure emotion and are great to photograph if they are still for a few seconds. I also find that photographing people outside where there is a nice background makes a portrait easier, and they have to have a photogenic face. I can’t do inside stuff or the Photoshop fixes.

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  5. Hi, Anne. What a gorgeous collection! Your portraits are wonderful, but all your images use bokeh to enhance the beauty of the image. I hope you share more of your portraits. You really captured the essence of your subjects–just fabulous!

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    1. Thanks Ann-Christine! Portraits have to be outdoors for me to get a good result. I don’t understand indoor lighting and don’t have any indoor lights. A flash on my camera is my speed.

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  14. Fantastic collection and words to flow right along with them. The shot of the mushroom was the grab for me. The exquisite detail was even better with bokeh. Clearly you are an accomplished photographer with knowledge to make things happen, while many of us just keep our fingers crossed. lol I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us next week. So nice. Donna

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  15. Pingback: Lens-ArtistPC-194-Bokeh – WoollyMuses

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