What's the Deal with Bokeh?

Have you ever seen a photo that had a creamy, almost blurry background, but the subject was sharp and in focus? Did you know that there's a special word for that in photography lingo? That word is bokeh. Bokeh is from the Japanese language, and it means, "How the lens renders light."

Photographers pay top dollar for a lens that can create a nice background bokeh. Along with that nice background blur, it also allows for more light to come into the lens.

The photo of the girl in the grass was shot around sunset. I was using my Tamron 70-180 mm lens with my shutter speed at 500, ISO at 100, and my aperture was set to 2.8. This allowed for more light to come into my sensor and to create that nice creamy background.

For Chance's senior photos, I swapped out my Tamron zoom lens and opted for my Sony 35 mm 1.4 prime lens. This is such a great lens for portraits. Again, although it was a bright day when we started, I didn't need to let in more light, I wanted that nice bokeh effect to blur out of the background of downtown Des Moines. I shot the majority of Chance's session at 1.4, which is something that I like to do when I'm shooting single portraits vs a family session.

I love the way that Chance is the star in his photos. Even the more dramatic photos with the Iowa Capitol in the background or Downtown Des Moines, my eye goes straight to him. That's why I love shooting with my 35 mm 1.4 lens.

The photo of this extended family session was shot with a f-stop of 3.2. There's less bokeh or blur in the background of the subjects because I used a higher f-stop. For this particular picture, I chose the aperture of 3.2 since the boys, grandparents, and mom were each on a different focal plane. Had I kept my aperture at 1.4, mom in the white would have been blurry and not sharp.

Occasionally I will make the foreground in focus and have the subjects blurry. All of the images were shot using my Sony A7iii camera body.

In the photo of the couple, the tall prairie grasses are in focus and the couple is in the background and blurred. My aperture was 1.8, which meant there's a very small amount of that will be in focus after the focal point. The focus landed on the grass, so the couple was blurred.

I love geeking out over camera settings and gear. It's so interesting to see how a tiny change in aperture can change the entire photo.

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