I had never even heard of bokeh photography, and when I saw some bokeh photos from DailySnaps: 2012 blog last month , I thought I knew how to do it. So a few days later I went to Wal-Mart and picked up some Valentine hole punches and some paper.

I punched a bunch of heart-shaped holes into a sheet of red paper and then tried it out in my office. Boy, was I way off. I couldn’t get the effect I had imagined in my mind, let alone the effect I saw in DailySnaps. I did a little more “How-To” research on it and tried again.

This time I punched a heart-shaped hole in some chipboard and cut it out to fit nicely over the end of my 50mm lens. I hooked it to the tripod, put it at table level, then set up the background. Two strands of Christmas lights draped over a broom and this little bendy guy standing about 3-4 feet infront of the lights, and 1 foot from the camera. To help reduce the glare on the table, I put a sheet of red paper on the table before setting the bendy-guy on it.

Here is the final result

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 0″3 | f/1.8 | ISO 100

That is one of the things I like about photography: there are always new things to try and different techniques to try and master. Photography is a life-long pursuit, and it’s worth every shot (okay, almost every shot!).

~signed, Carltonaut