Bokeh (from the Japanese boke ぼけ, “blur”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject. [wikipedia]

[Rooster shot taken with my new lensbaby.]

I never shot film. When I bought my husband a digital camera for Christmas about 7 years ago, the world of photography laid itself out in front of me. It took no time at all for everyone, Fred & I included, to forget that that I had bought him the camera; it always seemed to be my camera and I fell in love with it.

A couple of years later, Fred bought me a Canon DSLR (the original Digital Rebel) and some very nice lenses. The camera has several automatic modes– portrait, landscape, macro, sports,… You choose your situation and set the dial and the smart camera figures out the f-stop and exposure.

[Disclaimer: I can be a dork! This info is to the best of my knowledge at this time. I'm not drinking.] The landscape mode chooses a small aperture; that’s a big f-stop number. Think of an f-stop number as a denominator of a fraction of the lenses open to light. The effect of a small aperture is a deep field of focus. (If you’re a photographer reading this and wailing and gashing your teeth at my ineffective or, heaven forbid, flat out wrong information, please leave a comment.) Ansel Adams was known for his f-stops of 64 — that’s very deep field of focus, things close and far away are all in focus.

Portraits are sort of the opposite of landscape on the smart camera’s dial. The portrait setting is designed to create a shallow depth of field. The subject’s eyes should be in the sharpest focus (well, that’s a rule and meant to be broken) and their surroundings are blurred. I hadn’t really noticed the blurred backgrounds of professional portraits for the first 30-something years of my life.

Even when I did start to understand the effect of a shallow depth of field and begin to recognize intentional blurriness, I still didn’t quite get it. My photos were busy! Wasn’t everything in the photo important? Weren’t all the details of the environment just more to love in a photo? Why wouldn’t people want all they could get in a photo, in the photo?

[Orchid petals shot with canon mp-e 65mm macro lens.]

Fred bought me a very nice macro lens, the Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5X Macro Lens a few years ago. (Here’s a review of the lens on photo.net.) I’m sure you’re beginning to see that Fred’s a great guy. This is a unique lens; it can magnify things up to 5 times. They say you can fill your photo with a grain of rice– I haven’t tried it. The photo above of the orchid petals was taken with this lens. It has a very shallow depth of field…. maybe only a few millimeters of depth are in focus at one time. I had ideas about what kinds of photos of flowers I wanted, but the photos taken with the lens didn’t match the images in my brain. I was frustrated.

I was a bit stressed in general. Plans for my new art weren’t working out like I thought they should. Other parts of my life weren’t fitting my idea how things ought to be. Nothing terrible, just lots of little stresses taking over my life.

[Weeping apricot shot with canon mp-e 65mm macro lens.]

And then something happened… I had an ephipany. I would be open to the moment. I would make a concerted effort to let go of stress. Be here now. Enjoy this moment. Now.

I started taking more photos with the particular macro lens. And now I love the blurriness. I had to step out of my thinking patterns to open myself up to the beauty of the blur. And somehow I think bokeh is a bit like a mantra for life: reduce distractions and emphasize the beauty.

[More on polaroids, lisa call, and finding joy in another post. Thanks for hanging on this long!]

I’ve been working on a new digital collage series– well, actually, several ideas for new series are stewing in my head at various stages, but I’m thinking of one in particular now. Each collage in the Plans & Diagrams series uses a photo of a linen sheet as the background image. I’m planning to do something similiar with this new series. The background images will be from a 19th century engineering book– here’s a tiny preview:

I spent a week at the beach (Emerald Isle, NC) a week ago. One day was stormy and the ocean rough. That evening my sister-in-law Cathy and I went shelling and we hit the jackpot! I’ve never seen so many seashells.

I’ve been scanning and photographing and thinking of new series for these images (and those hundreds of photos from yosemite). My usual process is to pick a dozen or so favorite shells to work with right away. I’ll scan or photograph the shell, then spend a good bit of time isolating the image from the background– careful work at this stage really pays off in the long run. My favorite book on image selecting, isolating, compositing techniques in photoshop is Katrin Eismann’s _Photoshop Masking & Compositing_.

Wow! Guy Kawasaki rocks! I had the pleasure of hearing Guy Kawasaki speak in Boston a couple of weeks ago. Guy talks about innovation, marketing, new business, and being open to new ideas. It was one of the most memorable talks I’ve ever attended. I’m sure my summary wouldn’t do Guy justice– please watch the talk at one of the links below and check out his blog. But, I will mention his first bullet, as a thought to reflect on today: make meaning

Guy’s blog: How to Change the World

Guy’s Art of Innovation presentation to another audience

google videos of Guy

Yosemite, here I come! I will be out of touch with regular life for about 10 days. No phone, no email, no television — sounds like heaven! I’m busily packing my camera equipment, camping gear, hiking boots, and Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. Well, I’m not really packing yet, mostly just throwing stuff on the bed. The pile keeps getting larger and the pack is looking smaller… Check out live views of Yosemite!