bokeh-mania

On Flickr, a fellow photographer (alyssakai) used a bokeh mask to make pretty heart bokeh in a few of her shots. I thought that was just so cool. I know this technique has been around for awhile, but I had never played around with it. Inspired, I set out to make my own masks.

Quinn and I decided on three shapes. Hearts, plus-signs and stars. Basically, you cut a small shape out of the center of a black piece of paper... You know what, I did a terrible job at following the directions, so check it out yourself here: DIY Create Your Own Bokeh

Since my bokeh masks were very lame, and held on by my own hand, there are usually some deep vignettes on the images. :P Kind of made me feel like I was using that fish-eye attachment on Griffin's old kit lens, which gave everything black corners. Bleh. But this was much cooler.

Sometimes the bokeh shapes aren't apparent. The next few pictures were taken without a mask - just regular pics, but all shot on 1.4/f. So pretty. :) I hardly ever shoot that low, but since you have to shoot on the lowest aperture with the bokeh masks, I thought I'd play around with it. 

Those big heart shaped leaves are violet leaves! There are tons of violet plants under the brush.

These white hearts are out-of-focus flowers. :)

Blue light leak up there in the corner. Hehe, fun!

Reflection in a hubcap. A VERY shiny hubcap.

Here are my silly bokeh masks. :P I literally just hugged them around the lens with my hand. It was all very make-shift! Anyway, there are my experimental pics. Enjoy!

Nighty-night.

- caroline