FROM THE WEB: HOW TO TAKE GORGEOUS BOKEH PHOTOS

Christmas is a perfect time of year to experiment with “bokeh” – the art of creating a perfectly blurry background in your images. With so many opportunities to photograph your family with a background of sparkling lights if you haven’t tried bokeh yet now is the time to grab your camera!

The key to great bokeh is to have a fast (or large) aperture, so set your camera to aperture priority with a large aperture (or portrait mode if you are not familiar with this mode yet) and get started! Distancing your subject from the background is important too, the farther away they are the larger and more ethereal the lights will appear.

Don’t forget to have some fun – this tutorial has some fantastic tips on creating great bokeh, as well as how to “shape” your bokeh into stars, hearts, etc. Fun stuff!