Day 12 & Lens-Artists PC: Bokeh

Today’s poem and photos go together especially well, since the poem describes the process of achieving my first deliberate bokeh. Still can’t pronounced it though.

I shall describe and show the process first and my poem will follow. Be patient, please.

First I saw our host Sofia’s post. Her photos have lovely blurred backgrounds – which bokeh basically is – but I worried what to do in my post since background is really not something to which I pay much attention. I do have some photos with blurred background and I like them, but this is when my point-and-shoot acted out without my will, like here last April:

But I often notice that my background is not how I’d like it, for example here:

I wish to learn so I asked Sofia for more info since just setting my camera to aperture priority (now that I can since in September I got a proper camera) wasn’t enough for me. Set to A and then what? I decided to go for a walk and test it out.

At first I just kept clicking and randomly rolling that little wheel which I assumed changed the aperture setting, like a child. As you can see, for someone who takes this many photos, I’m rather clueless. These were the first examples:

f/14

f/14

f/36

f/32

f/36

f/32

Clearly I just had to do a gate bokeh. And the moon bokeh. They say the background object has to be far…

Then it dawned on me that I had to do multiple shots of a SINGLE view, but with different apertures. Bingo! As you can see in the two examples below, this worked like a charm.

I’m most impressed with the last photo in each trio because this is the first time I had this kind of result on purpose.

As I check the properties, I see that in the first set the apertures are: f/32, f/14, and f/5.6.

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And in the trio below the apertures are: f/36, f/16, and f/8.

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The lesson I have learned is that I want the smallest number possible if I wish for my object to really stand out.

Let me invite you to view Leya’s post for this challenge to see how it is done properly. Those mushrooms have all the magic!

And finally, here is what we had to do today poem-wise. I chose the form of triolet which I noticed below in my NaPoWriMo memories from two years ago. I haven’t written another one since.

Prompt 12: “Yesterday, I challenged you to write a poem about a very large thing. Today, I’d like you to invert your inspiration, and write a poem about a very small thing.” 

Bokeh

They say: “Do dots and blur to grab the view.”
Mom says: “Don’t do what you cannot pronounce.”
You worry. It’s not them, it’s you,
they say. Do dots and blur grab the view?
A million blobs out of the blue! 
I’m grateful that I chose to pounce.
They say: Do dots and blur to grab the view.
Mom says: Don’t do what you cannot pronounce.

For Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Sofia at Photographias: Bokeh

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: Haibun, then

And drivers simply pass an inch away from your body with speed intact.

And after the Easter, furnace wood pellets get replaced overnight with barbecue coal no matter what. As if to say:

We’re Italians.
We will have our barbecue.
We want our spring. NOW. (Read all.)

2019: Significantly drab

Precious shirt, dull camera?
Love the drab,
shun the significant.

Frankly, I’d gladly dump both.
No – let me tear up the shirt
and give the camera to the cameraless.

It brought me much joy.
It was a present for my ex.
I’m sly like that.

Ask my mother
how she gifted a doll to her brother.
He was given an hour to play with it. 

Read all

2020: Violent act

What poets do is far from freedom fight
and poetry is such a violent act.
They plot, kill, murder using all their might,
what poets do is far from freedom fight.
We’d think that they do nothing else but write.
But you see wounds and wound yourself, in fact
what poets do is far from freedom fight
and poetry is such a violent act.

(Click for a smile.)

2021: A celebrated country

A time hopper in a tin can
spots an unhuman on a worldlet. 

They found a country.

A time hopper in a tin can
thinks back through her life span
and names it Italia, 
a celebrated country.

In their country for old men,
a time hopper in a tin can
celebrates daily that she met
an unhuman on his worldlet. 

Click for more Tuscany

This day in my blogging history

• 2014: “Please help understand”. When mother asked an important question: How are these four songs different and why are some considered more normal than others?

• 2015: No love can survive muteness.

  —Milan Kundera