I'm watching you... by robz

I'm watching you...

This was an experiment in catching bokeh highlights, as kindly explained to me by FB @fbailey. The water Dragon was quite happy to pose.
Very cute water dragon.
December 28th, 2018  
He looks rather proud. Well composed.
December 28th, 2018  
He has a nice cushioned perch :)
December 28th, 2018  
He is a handsome fella! Is bokeh just the blur from depth of field or is there is something special about it?
December 28th, 2018  
beaut lizard Dragon !
December 29th, 2018  
@rosie00 Hi Lesley - your question made me go to Google - I know very little about the technicalities of photography! ( trying to learn though...) So here's a bit of what I found out:

In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".

To achieve bokeh in an image, you need to use a fast lens—the faster the better. You'll want to use a lens with at least an f/2.8 aperture, with faster apertures of f/2, f/1.8 or f/1.4 being ideal.

I had no idea what a fast lens was! So:

A lens with a larger maximum aperture (that is, a smaller minimum f-number) is called a "fast lens" because it can achieve the same exposure with a faster shutter speed.

HOW TO ACHIEVE NICE BOKEH (in plain English!)
Use the right lens. ...
Select a large aperture. ...
Get close to your subject.
Focus on what you want to have sharp. ...
Put your subject far from the background you want blurred out.

It is interesting hey? And, They make it sound so easy!! Cheers - hope this makes sense - and thanks for spurring me on to look it up.
December 29th, 2018  
@robz Wow, thanks Rob for all that information..I should have looked it up myself. Sometimes I don't understand the explanations either! I know to use a large aperture in low light - the blur I get is pot luck, I am not sure how to achieve a particular effect. A lot to learn eh! I have learnt such a lot since doing this project.
December 29th, 2018  
And to me, bokeh is a Japanese word. I looked on sci.lang.japan and it says "The word "boke", pronounced "bok-ay", and usually written ぼけ or ボケ, has a number of different meanings. It can mean stupid, unaware, or clueless. This word is also used in photography to mean "deliberately out of focus", and has come into English as "bokeh", with an additional "h" to show the pronunciation."
January 3rd, 2019  
Lovely photo of this lizard, and the composition is dynamic!
January 3rd, 2019  
@jyokota Hi Junko - sorry to be so long replying to you. Thanks so much for the interesting info - I had to laugh at the original meanings - "unaware" and "clueless" are both pretty apt definitions for my photographic skills! :) The " deliberately out of focus" phrase makes sense, although I think it must be easier to do with a more sophisticated camera. Anyway - good fun trying. Cheers Rob
January 5th, 2019  
@robz -- sometimes I write whatever happens to be in my head. Overly long, but thanks for reading and showing interest in Japanese!
January 5th, 2019  
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