Photo2Q2.3: Natural Bokeh

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Photo2Q2.2: Halloween Bokeh

I am all too familiar with the concept of bokeh since my favorite and most addicting lens to use is my 50mm f/1.8. Watching the videos provided on Google Classroom, all of the information made sense. But there's always more to learn. Thus, when I learned about custom bokeh shapes, I was particularly interested in the effects it could provide to some photos. Now personally, I think it's too dominant of an element to include in a photo if done too excessively that the bokeh becomes the main focus of the photo instead of the object itself, so my initial impression was that the shapes needed to maintain the theme while not becoming such a dominant element. In essence, simple shapes > complex shapes.

Skull Candy

Psychotic Episode

Grave Digger

For all of the above images, I used a 50mm f/1.8. I tried experimenting with a 18-55mm f/3.5 kit lens, but results were pretty awful and the bokeh shapes did not appear to come out at all (resulted in regular orbs or darkened the image too much, but the size of the cutout may have had a role here).

After experimenting entirely with low light, I found that illumination of the foreground object is crucial due to the cutouts preventing some light from reaching the lens. Otherwise, you will end up with excessively grainy photos. In addition, my cutouts were a tad bit too large for the 50mm lens, so next time (likely for the custom shape tasks) I will elect to utilize an appropriately sized cutout. Distance to the object also mattered because sometimes the bokeh would be too out of focus to recognize, or the composition of the entire photo would be entirely different and undesirable. Therefore, balance and proper positioning of the objects utilized is important.

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