Shutterbug Sunday: I Heart Bokeh & GIVEAWAY

As I discussed in my last Shutterbug Sunday post, I love bokeh...gorgeous blurry, round, magical bokeh. This week, I wanted to show your something different, my attempts at heart-shaped bokeh.

First, I scoured the house looking for black construction paper and finally came up with a piece of brown paper. Close enough, I was in business! Using the small end of the lens hood from my 35mm 1.8, I traced a circle on the paper and cut a heart in the exact center with my husband's pocket knife. With all fingers still intact, I trimmed the circle a bit with a pair of scissors and taped it to the inside of the hood with some blue painter's tape.

With my family laughing at me for making my D90 look like a school craft project, I headed out in search of bokeh producing light. I shot the sunshine streaming through my bouganvillea arbor. I skulked around the neighborhood after dark capturing headlights, street lights, and signal lights. I punched holes in a piece of cardboard and captured the perfect heart-shaped dots that appeared when I placed it in front of a window. I even dug in the attic for our white Christmas lights and added them to our garden hedges to make more defined hearts that you see in photo above. Our neighborhood lawn crew must think that I have lost my mind.

A few tips:

Use a lens with the largest aperature possible (f1.4, 1.8, 2.0) and make sure the heart is exactly in the center of the circle.  Due to the large amount of the lens covered, I found that I had to adjust the shutter speed to a slightly slower speed to allow in additional light and I set my ISO to 100 to prevent grain.

Get out and try it, experiment with other shapes, and link-up your own photos to the Linky tool that I have provided.  As an added incentive, I am giving away a set of 5 greeting cards from my print collection to one person that links up by November 27th at Midnight.

I invite you to visit my blog, bliss and folly, to see more examples.
Until next time. Stay sweet. ♥ tammy lee

Shutterbug Bonus: Depth of Field (DOF)




"racing the rain" - deep depth of field

  Depth of field is the front-to-back focus area in your photographs in which objects appear crisp or "in focus." “Shallow” depth of field is when only a sliver of your image, usually the main subject, is in focus while the foreground, background, or both are not. The opposite is true for “deep” depth of field. The foreground, subject, and background are all in focus, as with beautiful sweeping landscapes.



"quiet time" - shallow depth of field

  Achieving your desired DOF is quite easy.  A very simple way to increase depth of field is to move away from your subject. I know this seems obvious but the further away you are from your subject, the more you can focus on.  Using this technique will change your composition so you will need to use additional elements, such as visual lines, architectural elements, or color, to draw your eye to your subject and add interest.



"with the tides" - deep depth of field

  You may also use your aperture settings to control your depth of field.  For a landscape, select a small aperture setting, f/16 or f/22, and adjust your shutter speed to compensate for the extra light needed. To draw the eye to a single subject, set a large aperture, such as f/1.8 or f/2.  In this instance, your shutter speed will need to be adjusted to reduce the amount of light needed since you are now shooting with the lens "wide open" and taking in much more light.  You will need to refer to your specific lens to determine your range of aperature settings.  In my own work, I use my 35mm f/1.8 lens the most and tend to shoot "wide open" with a very shallow depth of field.  You will find the setttings that reflect your personal style.



"picnic" - shallow depth of field

  If you are using a camera (such as my Nikon) with Advance Scene Modes (Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Close-up, Night Portrait), you can also use the landscape and close-up modes.  The camera will automatically adjust the shutter speeds and aperature settings for you to achieve similar affects.
Until next time. stay sweet ♥tlb. http://www.blissandfolly.com/