Is bokeh just reality slacking off?

[Alan Kyker]

Is bokeh just reality slacking off?

The optics nerds out there, which is probably all of you, will say "The convex lens ray diagram clearly shows how an out of focus point source becomes a circle of confusion bla bla..." Bokeh ball in camera speak. Reality knows this. It invented refraction after all, and it knows what it can get away with.

So next time you look at a picture with an out of focus city scape or treeline that looks like it was finger painted by a 6 year old, ask your self "Is there really a city there, or did reality assign the background to the slow intern as a make work project?"

 

[atom14]

One thing's for sure: you've just said it. (Now, what exactly did you mean by it...? :-| )

atom14.

 

[SirLataxe]

One thing's for sure: you've just said it. (Now, what exactly did you mean by it...? :-| )

atom14.

The OP seems to be saying that bokeh is just an automatically imposed feature of the physics inherent in cameras and lenses - which it is. He also seems to be decrying it's use as a supposed "artistic" choice by we button-pressers.

Personally I have some sympathy with the notion that many photographers big-up their "artistic" credentials by claiming an agency for things that are just such automatic and unavoidable features of cameras and all the other highly automated photographic gubbins.

On the other hand, as with every other aspect of automatically imposed features of cameras, lenses et al, we users can manipulate them to a small degree, which manipulations can certainly improve photos in various ways.

The nature of the camera and other photographic tools, though, makes photography a rather easy craft with correspondingly easy skill levels, not an art. Perhaps PPing can turn a well-taken photo into some kind of art .... although PP software too is becoming more and more automated. One can be "an artist" with only one button press to impose a PP-rendered "look".

Some PPing is more like painting, with a large degree of alteration made with a large understanding and PP skill set, with the photo the equivalent of an interesting medium on which to create that imposes a bit of its own nature (like carving in wood that has an already extant grain, figure and colour variation).

The "choice" of bokeh is just a twist of the aperture control on a lens though, eh?

 

[atom14]

One thing's for sure: you've just said it. (Now, what exactly did you mean by it...? :-| )

atom14.

The OP seems to be saying that bokeh is just an automatically imposed feature of the physics inherent in cameras and lenses - which it is. He also seems to be decrying it's use as a supposed "artistic" choice by we button-pressers.

Personally I have some sympathy with the notion that many photographers big-up their "artistic" credentials by claiming an agency for things that are just such automatic and unavoidable features of cameras and all the other highly automated photographic gubbins.

On the other hand, as with every other aspect of automatically imposed features of cameras, lenses et al, we users can manipulate them to a small degree, which manipulations can certainly improve photos in various ways.

The nature of the camera and other photographic tools, though, makes photography a rather easy craft with correspondingly easy skill levels, not an art. Perhaps PPing can turn a well-taken photo into some kind of art .... although PP software too is becoming more and more automated. One can be "an artist" with only one button press to impose a PP-rendered "look".

Some PPing is more like painting, with a large degree of alteration made with a large understanding and PP skill set, with the photo the equivalent of an interesting medium on which to create that imposes a bit of its own nature (like carving in wood that has an already extant grain, figure and colour variation).

The "choice" of bokeh is just a twist of the aperture control on a lens though, eh?

^ Your reasoning is my sentiment to quite an approximation, which quality the OP's was mostly devoid of.

atom14.

 

[AWG_Pics]

One thing's for sure: you've just said it. (Now, what exactly did you mean by it...? :-| )

atom14.

I think the OP was saying: "Watch your backgrounds!" Maybe...

 

[BBbuilder467]

There is so much emphasis on fast lenses for low light and shutter speed, especially with primes, that you have to remember to stop down for DOF.

It's easy to overlook if you aren't familiar with landscape.

 

[Suntan]

Not sure about your argument, but a related corollary is that many/most pictures with tons of bokeh and just a razer thin slice of one eye in focus is usually the photographer slacking off.

Instead of constructing a composition with a complementary background, and use of light and shadow to direct viewers to the intended subject, it's just BAM! everything out of focus except the one thing I want you to look at!!

 

[OldGuy-Yuri]

Is bokeh just reality slacking off?

The optics nerds out there, which is probably all of you, will say "The convex lens ray diagram clearly shows how an out of focus point source becomes a circle of confusion bla bla..." Bokeh ball in camera speak. Reality knows this. It invented refraction after all, and it knows what it can get away with.

So next time you look at a picture with an out of focus city scape or treeline that looks like it was finger painted by a 6 year old, ask your self "Is there really a city there, or did reality assign the background to the slow intern as a make work project?"

no, bokeh is not 'slacking off'. it is the actual physical approximation of what happens in human sight.
We also have convex lenses, which have variations in visual mechanics. Our own vision 'focuses' on where we place our attention, and objects distant (and peripheral sight) to that attention point are out of focus/bokeh-ed... As we move our 'attention' to things apart from the former attention point, our eyes focus quickly on them.
It happens seamlessly, so we rarely (if ever) notice that there are out-of-focus areas in our field of sight.
And, photography is just another creational art, the camera another art tool, like paint brush. It is not a reproduction of real world, it is a representation with greater dimensional representation than paint on canvas...
Bokeh is just a 'technique' in that art form, as chiaroscuro is for painting.

And DOF and point of convergence are used in both those art forms...
Yuri

--
" For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” - Henry Beston

 

[atom14]

No, really...!!! A lot of the replies, and also the OP's initial ... [your interpretation here] are talking about the zone of sharp focus in a picture. Isn't "bokeh" the "quality" of the unfocused zones? Words like "crispy", "swirly" come to mind, NOT the OOF zone itself.

Well, even if the OP has long abandoned this thread, the question of the definition is not moot, as it's still "photographers" discussing a photographic term. [A suitable emoji for exasperation.]

atom14.