There is no doubt that photography is one of the fastest growing passion among people of different ages. They want to try different techniques and tools to enhance their photographic skills. Bokeh is currently the fastest growing fads in modern photography. Bokeh term is used to represent the shape of light which is blurred in the background of the photo. But nowadays, there is a trend to use the filter of different shapes, heart or stars for example, to create customized shape of the bokeh. These customized shapes are achieved by using the bokeh filter over the camera lens. Bokeh is a photography term derived from the Japanese word for "blur" or "fuzzy". Bokeh refers to the unfocused background in a photograph. Bokeh filter is a simple filter that clips onto the front end of your lens and hence the filter blocks out pieces of light that cause the bokeh (blur) effect in your images to take the shape of the filter.

Bokeh filter produces nice shape when you use it with big aperture lens so that the foreground will be in focus and the background out of focus. The more out of focus the background lights are, the better the results will be. Soft and blurred background with smooth edges is considered as a good bokeh because sharp edge bokeh is usually unpleasant to our eyes.

Here is one of the pictures I shot at 2010 cherry blossoms festival in Washington DC. You can see the bokeh effect on the background where out of focus background images are making fuzzy circles kind of shapes. This bokeh effect was the result of shooting with small aperture value (large opening of the aperture) while maintaining the proper distance with the subject without using any bokeh filter. In other terms, we can also say that this picture has shallow depth of field. If you are interested in knowing more about DoF, please read my blog titled “what is depth of field?”.

Focal Length - 200mm     Aperture - f/6.3     Exposure - 1/640sec     ISO - 200

Please feel free to share your comments and question if you have any. And if you want to share your bokeh photography, you can also insert the link into the comment section. Happy Shooting!