The best way for the object to make sense is to use something that's already in your surrounding. The second reason is because I want whatever object I use to make sense. The first reason is because it can be a pain to have to carry around a bunch of objects that you plan on holding in front of your lens (I still do this, but a lot less then I used to). Instead, a lot of my images that use this effect are created using elements that are found within the surroundings that I’m currently shooting in. But the truth is, most of my foreground bokeh images don't use lights at all. I used Christmas lights in the above examples because everyone knows what they look like in focus, so it’s easier to relate that knowledge to the out of focus image.

Using Christmas lights for this effect is all well and good in the winter months surrounding the holidays, but what about the rest of the year? Or what about when you get tired of seeing Christmas lights in all of your photos? The good news is that bokeh is bokeh no matter what it is made from.

Notice that 35mm at f/5.6 looks very similar to the above 20mm at f/1.8. The below example is a 35mm lens going from f/1.4 to 2.8 then to f/5.6. This is because the lights are becoming more in focus. Like the example above, if we have the lights pressed right against the glass of a 35mm lens and change the aperture, you will see that the size decreases as the aperture increases. Below is a comparison of an 85mm, 35mm, and 20mm with all the same settings (except the 20mm is at f/1.8 instead of f/1.4).Īperture also plays a large role into how the bokeh will look. When the lights are pressed right against the glass of an 85mm lens, the bokeh will fill more of the frame and appear larger than when compared to a 35mm lens with all the same settings. Since we already know that the closer the lights are to the lens, the larger they are, we are going to look at the differences caused by focal length when the lights are pressed right against the lens. The first thing we will look at is focal length. Like most things in photography, the lens we choose plays a very large role in the final image. Now that we have a good understanding of how foreground bokeh is achieved, we need to understand how lens choice affects our end result. It’s because of this fact that we can use a small little Christmas light to create large bokeh that fills up a frame. The difference here is that the closer an element gets to your lens, the larger it appears whereas the further an element gets to the background, the smaller it will appear. Likewise, if you have an element really close to your lens, that element will be more out of focus than an element closer to your subject. If you focus on your subject and there is an element far off into the background, that element will be more out of focus than elements that are closer to your subject. The thing to keep in mind is that foreground bokeh acts very similar to background bokeh.

Bokeh lights