What is “Bokeh?”
Until about a month ago I’d never heard of this term. I’ve been in and around photography since my teen years and you’d think I’d know what Bokeh meant. Because of my recent quest to upgrade all my photography equipment I’ve been doing a great deal of research and I began to run across this term.
As it turns out, Bokeh is used to describe what I usually shoot for in photography (no pun intended) β putting everything else out of focus. I love to shoot with my aperture wide open, partly because I like to just use available light and stopping down at all would simply slow down my shutter speed too much. It’s for this reason that I’ve upgraded to better and faster lenses β faster being a larger aperture.
So, where does the term Bokeh come from? That’s to Wikipedia I found this:
Bokeh (from the Japanese boke γΌγ, “blur”[1]) is a photographic term referring to out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens. The aesthetic qualities of the bokehs produced by various lenses are open to dispute, but it is generally conceded that an out-of-focus background image can at the very least reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.
I would have to agree with this general aesthetic statement … I like to keep everything else, ie. distractions, out of focus.
- Kyle Dreier