Bokeh Christmas Photos... take 1

credit

Hello all!! I have  been eying these beauties since the  Christmas Season has been upon us. My mouth has been watering trying to figure out just  how I can make these beauties!! Then I stumble across this little article while on vacation.

What is Bokeh and how do you take these pictures. Well, it should be relatively simple with all the right tools. Christmas lights, and a camera lens with 'fast' aperture (large aperture). As you shoot the  larger end of your aperture you throw the background out of focus (or what we like to say 'fuzzy background'). Thus making  your  Christmas lights out of  focus. The hard part is to try to have  something  in your photo in focus ie a pet, baby, Christmas ornament etc.

credit

So I started to ask questions and this is what  I got...

Joy Rossi Photography

Joy sent me her  pull back with instructions on how to create this lovely image.

Joy Rossi Photography

To create the Bokeh Effect Joy has a paper seamless background then the lights a foot in front then my subject 5 feet in front of the lights, window light on the left reflector on the right. She used a photovision taget to custom white balance and shot at around F1.8- 2 using a 85 1.2 lens.

Now I do not have a fancy studio to take my pictures so we just started playing with the aperture and the  distance between the subject and lights.

And here is my favorite one we got of Sterling and the Christmas lights. Just when we got back from Canada IHeart Faces threw out this lovely challenge. So we entered here.

May all your  Christmas's be bright!!