A Lil’ Bit of Bokeh Romances the Candle. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

As I promised in my previous post, here are some bokeh photographs that I think turned out much better than yesterday’s photographs.  I was a tad nervous about shooting at night because, every other time I’ve tried, my photographs resemble a blurry, uninteresting mess.  However, setting my camera in manual mode for this bokeh experiment helped me learn more about photographing in low-lighting situations.  The final photograph (at the bottom of this post) is an example of an in-focused shot I managed to capture… I think I see improvement in myself!  Yippy Skippy!  I decided to explore bokeh at night because my husband had set up all these tiki torches around our patio to keep the pesky mosquitoes away.  I thought the flames would make for interesting compositions, so I immediately dove right into the process. I tried multiple ways of photographing with a bokeh mind… some images are complete compositions of circularly-shaped blurs, while others include pieces of the composition in focus as well as pieces out of focus.  There are a couple photographs that are complete, bokeh blurs and I find them to be my strongest photographs.  The blurred circles and lighting enhanced the subject’s formal qualities with a romantic glow.  I decided to include one photograph of a tiki torch shot in the daytime because I thought it would add another variation to this experiment, and series, of mine.  I love the abstracted, yet realistic product involved in the bokeh process.  I’m not sure if these photographs will satisfy everybody’s taste, but I hope they will please the bokeh fans.  I read somewhere that professional photographers continuously disagree about which bokeh look is “better”… the clean, complete blurred background with an in-focus subject in the foreground.. or the impressionistic stamps of circles look that  adds interest to the subject.  I happen to enjoy both… but I find the complete, circularly blurred compositions to be stronger… but that is merely my opinion.

Tiki Flames with Bokeh Embers. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

A Window to Bokeh’s Soul. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

Fire Burning in the Bokeh Daylight. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

A Bokeh Asteroid and Its Shoot Star Companion. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

A Patriotic Bokeh Flame. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8x 10 inches.

A Twinkle in Bokeh’s Night Time. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

A Man Ray, Alien Vision in Bokeh and Black. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

Opaque Illuminations. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

No Trace of Bokeh Enflamed. Polly Nance. Digital photograph. 8 x 10 inches.

 Thank you for taking the time to stop by my blog and read this post!  Please feel free to leave any and all feedback.  I don’t really know what I am doing! But I had fun with it!

PEACE, LOVE UNTIL MY NEXT BLOGGY-BLOG POST, DEAR FELLOW BLOG READIN’ FRIENDS.