Bokeh – frederikboving

Leading role

If you have ever talked to a flower or macro photographer about their best tip for getting a good shot, you will often hear them talk about finding a good background for the subject rather than worrying about the subject so much. Don’t get me wrong, the subject is of course also important, but often the balance tilts to the favour of the subject at the expense of the background.

I don’t know why this focus on the background apparently is more important to macro and flower photographers, but I think it has to do with the nature of the subject – it is often very simple (= elegant, minimalistic, focused) and hence any distractions from the subject hits extra hard in this line of photography.

I think the rest of us (i.e. non flower / macro photographers) can learn from the focus they have on getting the background right. Often, when I review my images in Lightroom, the difference between a good shot and a bad one is determined by the background. As Joel Sartore says in his book Photo Basics: If there is something in your frame that is not working for you, then it is actually working against you!

I’ll leave you some examples below where I think the background works as it should.

Photography composition and the background to the subject.

A large aperture and some distance to the background helps bringing the right parts of the image out of focus.

The large bokeh balls do steal some attention but also help create an atmosphere that emphasises the leaves.

The red and green colors underline the birds lack of colors.

The play between in focus and out of focus shows that the background can as important as the subject.

A classic example of underlining the subject with a carefully selected background. Sun through trees on a winter’s day.

Using a flash and the effect of light falloff, I was able to make these withered leaves stand out on a dark background. If you are thinking that it did not look like this IRL, then you are absolutely right!

Here the balance between subject and background is almost reversed – the background takes the leading role.

Bokeh is just another word for out of focus, often abbreviated to OOF!

But why is that suddenly important in photography when everybody talks about sharp images and getting the subject in focus? It has to do with the isolation of your subject – to make sure that the background does not steal the attention from your subject, be it a flower, a tree or a model just to name a few examples. Just like in a movie where you want the main actors to stand out and shine, your supporting actors should be support the main actor without stealing the limelight.

In the example below the birch stem is the star, albeit not a very interesting one, but it illustrates background blur or bokeh very fine. What you see to the right of the birch stem is actually sun lit leaves, but because of the strong element of bokeh, it appears to be just a soft backdrop of white and brown colors.

There are several factors that determine the bokeh, but most notably the aperture you shoot at and the distance from your subject to the background. Larger apertures (smaller f/stop numbers) gives a more so called depth of field, i.e. the depth of the interval that appears to be sharp. So if you shoot at a very wide aperture, the depth of field is narrow and if you have focused correct on your subject, the background is more likely to be OOF Similarly, if there is a big distance from your subject to the background, then it is more likely the background is OOF as the depth of field cannot reach so far.

Photographers can study out of focus elements for hours and comment on their shape and size. In the example above the light behind the coffee mug is certainly out of focus, and the light appears as round balls. You can see that the rightmost ball is very round whereas the ones to the left are more oval – it has to do with how close you are to the corner of the image. Also, sometimes bokeh balls like these appear square rather than round – that is because the aperture blades are in use and determine the shape of the bokeh.

As a rule of thumb you want the bokeh to be creamy and pleasing to look at. In other words, the edges of the bokeh balls should not have rings or hard transition to the areas outside the bokeh.

Tag: Bokeh

Mind the background in your pictures

Leading role

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Video links

What is bokeh? What is OOF?

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