Exploring the Mystical Beauty of Bokeh: A Guide to Captivating Photography

Captivating, mesmerizing, and downright enchanting – that’s the captivating world of bokeh photography. Bokeh, derived from the Japanese word for “blur” or “haze,” refers to the aesthetic quality of the out-of-focus areas in an image. It is characterized by a dreamy, soft, and beautifully blurred background that complements the subject of the photograph. While the subject remains sharp and clear.

In order to create a bokeh one need a 50 mm focal length objective or longer. Don’t be afraid to approach the subject and take the picture with a small aperturenumber (read aperture wide open).

It works as well in nature as with model (a family member can do, real models can be expensive…)

Keep photographin’

Michiel and Evi’s wedding

On august 20th of last year I had the honnor and opportunity to report Michiel and Evi’s wedding. Evi is a ex collegue from my former workplace connected with a very special bound. The day she asked to do this job, I didn’t hesitate altough I never report a wedding ever before. A first shoot was done to consider the color conditions in the neighbour’s garden. It was also ment to mesure the ease to pose before the camera. After reading books and exploring a million or more wedding photographs I started on the wedding day early in the morning. It started in the bathroom where tungstene light turned the pictures into a spooky blue. As the day went by the automatic white balance took over control.

All pictures were taken in raw format, so they all could be corrected in postprocessing.

A love impression in the neighbour’s garden

My buddies were two Nikon D800 camera’s, the first equipped with a AF-S 24-70 mm F:2.8 VRII, the second with a AF-S 70-200 mm F:2.8 VRII.
When the day passes by and extra light was needed a Nikon speedlight SB600 was used. It took two weeks to postproces and reduce the amount of pictures to a reasonable number. Altough can 1100 pictures be considered as a reasonable amount?

In this gallery 19 pictures from the wedding were distilled and published with the explicite permission of Evi and Michiel

La Rance, une reflection

During my last holidays a bike trip took me from Evran to Taden in Bretagne (France). Early in the morning along the river in absence of wind there were a lot of places with splendid reflections. Some of them are worth it for discution.

river sas
River sas along the Rance

This picture was taken during the early morning and with a circular polarizer filter. The azimuth of the sun was still low and can be distilled from the spot in the right upper corner.

Reflections of trees along the river.

Again a capture with a cicular polarizer. To obtain wonderfull reflections it is very important that water stand still. The point of view need to be as low as possible (without gettin’ wet feet…)

The need of managing backup

When collecting a quantity of images one can store them on different media to preserve them against fysical loss. Ok so did I. But when it comes to a quantity of a few terrabytes most among us can loose the secure attitude to backup the images. Some have (like myself) only one big storage containing years of photographs.

And then, one day comes Murphy… Not one single picture left over from a crashed hard disk.

Lucky I have a brother in crime, he really is the great magicien Merlin from the Dark ages. He was capable to recover 100% of the lost images. It took him six days to restore them all on different hard disks and it took me an additional two weeks to rebuild the catalog.

On his advice I bought a portable 4 TB SSD and set up a synchronisation with an existing 4TB NAS drive. To economise space and time on the NAS drive I only synchronise the last year (in my case 2023). The earlier years are stored on two different hard disks.

I learned my lesson ! Take the time needed to backup your images. It’s no waste time at all! This horrible nightmare resulted in a reorganistation of my website. I hope you find your way out.

Enjoy and keep photographin’

Specially thanks to my brother!

Winterviews

When things get frozen they must be memorised by photographers. As long they have (sun)light they will be all over the country taking pictures. Some of them will stand straith up while others will lay down or bend their knees to obtain the desired frame.
It’s a hard time for the fotographers in these cold times.

Take a look at these winter images of hard labor in extreme conditions.

Raw images, are they really better?

Most of the cameras nowadays have the capability to shoot raw images. They take a lot of space on memorycards, but they have a great advantage. Captures in jpg allowes more pictures on the same card but they contains less information than raw images. Of course many among us have nore the skill, nore the time to spend hours on post processing. Taking in account that a suitable program can cost a lot of money, most of the picture will be proccessed directly in the camera by creating jpg files.

The raw images contains exactly the light capured while pushing the button. All the colors and intensity of the scene are stored in one single file. All this information can be influenced through the post procces program.

Nikon delivers for free View NX, a ready and easy to use program. For those who will spend some money Adobe lightroom is the best you can get for an affordable price. Of course you need a computer to run the interface. The advantage of Lightroom is the extroardinary database included to store the images.

On android tablets Photo Mate R3 is available. The user-friendliness in both interfaces is almost equal. Just handle some sliders to develop the original image. Of course the lightroom interface goes farbeyond the classical knowledge of most amateur photographers. Even I know less than 20 % of lightroom’s capabilities and that’s ok. It offers me the possibility to learn and explore.

Do not be afraid to push the button or slide all the way , the effect of overacting can deliver some stunning compositions or even more strange abstracts.

Can noise ruin a picture?

Many have taken pictures in dark conditions. Photographing light shows and fireworks are as simple as pushing the button on the camera. Most cameras support automatic settings for night photography. So far so good. Until one zooms into detail….

A mix of visible colored pixels appears in dark areas or in shadow areas. In the photographic world this is called noise. It can ruin a picture but not always as explained further on. In some cases it can be eliminated by post processing. Each picture contains noise, the higher the iso value or cheaper the camera, the more noise will be visible.

All cameras contain software to reduce the amount of noise. Of course, high end camera’s contain more sophisticated algorithms to reduce noise. Photographers have a major role in reducing noise but that’s for later. 

The heart of the camera is the sensor. It will capture light every time the shutter is pushed. A sensor is a million bunch of pixels. Each pixel contains four units. One unit is sensitive to red light, one for blue light and two units for green light (the double green unit explains why red and green colors are tough to capture). The amount of light reaching the sensor will trigger these tiny little units. It is obvious that green will trigger the green units more than the red units and vice versa. That’s how colors are made. The processor in your camera will calculate the RGB value for each pixel. Let’s get back to the noise…

One can easily understand, the less light captured on a pixel, the more difficult it will be for the processor to calculate the exact RGB value. When a few pixels receive the same amount of light there will be differences in the RGB values. All those differences are the base for noise. By zooming in on a picture one will see differences between adjacent pixels in the same area of color.

How to avoid noise in photography? The easiest way is to take pictures in broad daylight. Obvious isn’t it? No kiddin’, In some cases one will take a picture during a concert, a romantic candlelight dinner or an evening city walk. These kinds of pictures will all have a high iso value and a low aperture value, resulting in unsharp pictures with a minimal field of depth.

The easiest way to avoid noise is to shoot at low iso, high aperture number and an extended shutter time, supposing the subject won’t move of course… Put the camera in the M modus and don’t forget the tripod or put the camera on a rock or place it on the ground. One needs more than one shot to reach a satisfying result. 

Another and better technique used by many pro’s is the ETTR or “expose to the right”. The picture is taken with overexposure, no more than 1.5  stops. Shadow parts will have the right exposure and need no further correction. The overexposed picture will be darkened in post processing and will keep splendid details. Darken a bright picture decreases noise, lightening a dark one will create it .

Although photographers hate it, noise can bring an artistic item to a picture. Remember analog black and white photographs from years ago. The grain in some pictures raises the artistic level. It is up to the photographer to avoid noise or to include it.

Sunny side up?

Why should pictures be exposed from left to right, first before last, upside up and bottom down? In this experiment I flipped the picture upside down. In the Old abbey in my village a little lake offered me the opportunity to photograph reflections in the water. By using a circular polarizer, the sun could be blocked on the watersurface. The result is a stunning mix of color. Of course it took time before all ducks were gone and the watersurface stopped moving.

First take with NIKON D800 + AF-S 24-70 mm f2.8 VRII,
38 mm f:5 1/100 iso 100
The second take with multiple trees with f:5.6 1/125 iso 100 at 44mm

Reflections

If water is present you can create wonderfull reflections. When shooting in between the golden hour and with a polarisation filter even more breathtaking shot can be taken. In the Old abbey park in my village I took a lot of reflections.

Nikon D800 – 24 mm – ISO200 – 1/160 f/2,8