Bokeh is such a beautiful thing. There are some ways we can get that beautiful look in our images. We'll look at some of those here.
There is a natural bokeh that can be captured outdoors with the beautiful natural light that God has given to us. Bokeh can be in front of and behind your main subject.
The light filtering through either leaves or other objects can create bokeh.
It can also be created by light reflecting off of shiny objects that are either in the foreground or background.
Lights can create bokeh when they're the right distance from your subject.
In this image to the right I have string lights hung around my window. The lights themselves along with the reflection of the lights have created a beautiful bokeh.
And then there's the bokeh that you can create in Photoshop. While it isn't natural, it does give off a beautiful effect.
This image to the left with the single carnation didn't have any bokeh, but I wanted some because it adds to the beauty.
This is how I created the effect.
- Open your image in Photoshop
- create an empty layer
- on that layer, with a white brush at a low opacity, create circles
- test out the opacity so that it looks natural
- create circles of different sizes
- you can create more than one layer to have your circles (bokeh) on different layers in order to make other changes to just some of them
- once you're happy with the number of circles you've created you can go to Edit, Transform and then use the skew tool to change the shape of the circles or just some of the circles if you'd done them on more than one layer.
- flatten the image and continue your edits
In this next image, I strategically placed some glass bottles in the background to create bokeh.
It's both natural and forced but gives off a beautiful effect.
I hope these have given you some ideas on how to create images both for this week's prompt as well as your future work.
Blessings on you and your day!
