I took these photos of a street lamp in the Piazza Bra in Verona back in June. At the time, I’d just gotten a new camera, so I was experimenting a bit with some different kinds of ways of representing light.
One thing you can do with a light (in a photo) is play with it until it becomes an unfocussed circled blur of light, called a bokeh. That’s what the two photos in the gallery below were attempting to show. I don’t know why, but I like these circles. I think in the brighter one, you get more of a sense of “light”, while in the other one you get more of a sense of “circles”. I’m not sure which I like better, neither is perfect in representing bokeh effect. But, I like them. I’d put them in the queue to blog about after our trip, but never really had more to say about them other than they were circles of light in the piazza. Circles of unfocussed light that i find oddly interesting. 😉
See what you think.
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- Bokeh in Piazza Bra, Verona – “light”
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- Bokeh in Piazza Bra, Verona – “circles”
Your post today was a lesson both in photography and in vocabulary. It’s nice to see how you “squint” with a camera. Also nice to be introduced to a new word. The OED lags behind again–about the closest it comes to “bokeh” is “bok choy.” But other Web dictionaries trace it to the Japanese word for ‘blur.’
When I looked at the circles first thing I thought of was Mickey Mouse, why, I have no idea. But I like both.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you like the post and the photos!
@ Will – the OED is definitely lagging behind, if bok choy is as close as you can come to bokeh. Too funny. Thanks for the other explanation, though, that the word comes from a Japanese word – interesting to know; if I knew it, I had forgotten.
@ Mom, I guess the overlapping 3 circles do kind of look like an abstract mickey mouse representation. 😉