About Me

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Recent retiree--35 year's experience teaching reading, English, adult basic education and volunteer leadership skills. Started this blog to exchange ideas and commentary with friends and others having an interest in joining the discussions. Greatest life accomplishments include: 1.organized my 3rd grade class to check out library books for me to get around librarian's weekly limit--Amazon.com, the Mullins Elementary 3rd Grade Class of 1956 is still waiting for "thank you" notes; 2. volunteered in the Peace Corps, island of St. Kitts, West Indies; 3.taught adults to read, earn their GEDs., and speak English as a second language; 4. bought a border collie puppy for $6, got evicted rather than give him up, and began a life-long love affair with all things "Dog"; 5. joined a physical fitness boot camp in my mid-50s--don't mess with someone who's been doing regulation pushups in wet grass at 5:30 a.m.; 6. walked across Northern England with best friend Sally--over 80 miles from the Irish to North Seas; and 7. travelled to many foreign countries for pleasure and work.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Good Photos Challenge Day 26 - Bokeh

When I saw that the challenge for today was "bokeh", first impression was easy peasy since I thought we were talking slang for "bouquet" as in this vase full of pink dogwood, lilacs, and japanese maple leaves:


Not so fast, photographer! Bokeh is Japanese for blurring, out of focus. In photography it takes a much more powerful lens than my point and shoot camera has, plus some skilled manipulation of light to achieve that perfectly blurred background around a clearly defined focal image. Here's my accidental bokeh of a japanese maple whirligig:



And then this photo of a falling autumn leaf is true bokeh. The photographer was Jesse Kruger, not me!

2 comments:

Jan n Jer said...

Faye...you are really learning alot...Bokeh is my fave kind of shot...n you achieved it! YAY!

Faye said...

janis--my almost bokeh was truly an accident. I've seen examples of bokeh where you have different shapes--stars, hearts, flowers, lights--floating across the blurred background. Achieved by taping a cutout of the shape over camera lens and then shooting in stages. I tried that and just got blurred Willie in a star cutout.