July 26, 2013

Wonderful Use of Bokeh

How do you achieve truly magical photograph and video footage?

Epic fireworks, apart from having a love of fireworks also hold a massive interest in the world of amateur photography and video capture.

We have discussed in past blogs about the use of long exposure for more abstract results in still photography and have recently been looking into ‘Bokeh’ which literally translates from the Japanese for ‘blur’ or an out of focus image. This method can result in some spectacular imagery particularly when taking shots of fireworks.

The method used playing around with focus and effects gives the resulting images an ethereal look resembling giant flowers in the sky, which gives us a better appreciation of why the Chinese name most of the fireworks effects accordingly. They use ‘Chrysanthemum, Dahlia and Peony’ to describe some of the beautiful sky artistry they produce an explosion.

Photography experts recommend that during the long exposure of the shot you should throw it out of focus to get the desired effect. Like anything, this will be a case of trial and error but if you keep practising (which we still are!) it will not be long before you are capturing photographs and video of spectacular quality.

Further reading on the above video can be found here :)