Bokeh

What is bokeh?  Until last night I had never heard of this.  I was reading some blogs and discovered what it is.  Bokeh is basically blurred light in a picture because it is out of the depth of focus.  When trying to achieve this, you just focus on something closer than the lights.  I found a few great tutorials on it here and here as well a how to really make it your own here.  The last one is pretty cool.  You can make heart shapes or any other shape you want- instead of circles.  I want to try that eventually.

If you are using a point and shoot camera, it is a little different (the tutorials above are all for DSLRs).  There is a tutorial for it here.

So these were my first attempts at it.  They are all photos of my Christmas tree which has all white lights.  They were quite yellow when I took them (like the second picture here) but I changed the white balance on two of them.  I should really adjust the white balance on my camera, but I haven't learned how to do that just yet- I will soon, though.  I think I could get better effects if I had some different lenses for my camera.  They would also probably be much nicer if I used my tripod.  The shutter speed was slower and I don't have a very steady hand.  For a first attempt (spur of the moment as well), I think they are great.

Try it out and see if you like it!

P.S. I am shooting with a Pentax K10D with the lens it came with- an SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 AL.