What is "bokeh"?

Have you heard a term "bokeh" and been wondering what it means? The term comes from a Japanese word "boke", which means blur, haze or fuzziness. It's a technique that adds to the aesthetic quality of a photograph by blurring. In most cases, part of the image is sharp and part of it is out of focus, but in some cases the whole image can be blurry.

So how to use this wonderful effect correctly? Not all photographs are great with bokeh. So think about what part of the image is the most important thing and focus your lens on that. Set your camera to a small aperture to get other parts of the image to show as blurry. Some lenses are better for bokeh than others.

Portrait photographers use bokeh a lot to get the subject to be sharp and background out of focus. It helps to bring out the separation between the subject and a busy background. And because of that, it also helps to keep wievers eyes in the subject. Fine art is a good example of a case, where the whole image can be out of focus.