So, what is bokeh, exactly? Simply, when someone talks about "bokeh" they are referring to the out of focus portion of a photograph, usually the background, especially highlights in the background that can appear as Blurry circles. Bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke which means blur (Wikipedia: Bokeh). When photographers discuss bokeh they are talking about its aesthetic quality. And as silly as it might seem, bokeh can be an important consideration in many photographs.

That's a new one to me - but, interestingly, something I've been working on in my photography lately. I've been spending a lot of time with my el-cheapo Vivitar zoom lens, which requires me to manually set the aperture. Of course, I'm lazy, so I only change it when there's a need, but I've also found that forcing that constraint on a days shooting (I've done both - all day: wide open, or all day: as closed as possible) makes me view things a bit differently.

The wide open day, of course, my photos had a wonderfully narrow depth of field. The closed-tight day, I had to be a lot more careful about movement (even more-so, since I didn't think to take a tripod with me!), which forced me to relearn a lot of the tricks of the trade I've used in the past, or read about - using nearby posts or fences as support, that sort of thing.

On the wide open day, I was shooting at the zoo - and a narrow depth of field gives you deliciously blurred backgrounds, or, as I now know to call it - Bokeh.

While we tend to think of a narrow depth of field as something we want to highlight the subject, to remove the distractions of a busy background, we need to bear in mind the aesthetic qualities of the blurred background itself, and how to best use those to evoke the emotive response we're looking for. In the meercat photo, I was more lucky than good - they look so naturally worried, and that shadow in the background looks so ominous...