360/365 - Jim - Presto

( f/8 62mm 1/15 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I had plans today for a photo that didn't work out, so I had to think of something else. I went downstairs and magically found my magic wand. So I wondered what I could do with it to portray magic. Then I thought about the little sparkles you see in the movies and knew I could use Christmas lights for bokeh to accomplish this. The hardest part of it was holding the wand in the right place and focusing while taking the picture. Because I had to be in front of the camera, I couldn't look through the viewfinder. It turned out just as I imagined, so I'm happy with it.

287/365 - Jim - Bokeh Colors

( f/2.8 66mm 1/40 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

I just wanted to play around with bokeh to see what kind of results I could get. I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens and set my camera to a 10 shot multi exposure. I pointed at a color changing led fragrance plug-in thing and took shots ever few seconds. Then I used the in camera overlay function to merge 3 photos together. This was just a test, but I think bokeh looks cool in photos and also in video.

086/365 - Jim - My cookies are gone

( f/8 70mm 1 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

We have been telling Jameson all day that tonight was when Santa is coming to bring presents. Here is proof for him. I plopped this Santa in front of the tree and tried various f stops to see what kind of bokeh I could get from the Christmas tree lights. I liked the f/2.8 bokeh much better than the f/8, but the Santa was not in focus as much as I liked so I went with f/8. Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

038/365 - Jim - Bokeh Rose

( f/2.8 200mm 1/60 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Theme is bokeh. You might be asking yourself "What is bokeh?" Well, it is a word derived from a Japanese word (boke) and is a photographic term referring to the appearance of the out-of-focus areas. This is produced by adjusting the lens to the highest aperture, in this case f/2.8 which results in a very shallow depth of field. The background circles are actually Christmas lights that I hung on my Translum background and put the (fake) rose in front of it about 10 feet. Then the camera was about 8 or so feet from the rose. I pointed two flashes at the rose. One from below with a snoot attached and the other from above with a grid spot. No post processing adjustments were made to this image.