Hey friends. A pain-point I am asked about often is: “how do I make the background of my image blurry?” Our iPhones can do this for us with a software, but our big-girl cameras require a little more input. That blur you’re looking for is referred to as bokeh and I am going to teach you how to make it!
How do you make bokeh?
Creating “bokeh” (that creamy blur you see often in portraits) is done through your aperture setting! Bokeh is created when you utilize a shallow depth of field, or wide aperture.
Great. What the heck is aperture?
Your aperture is the diaphragm opening in your lens that helps control the amount of light getting in. Aperture is measured is F-stops. (This should sound like absolute gibberish if you are new to photography!)
The depth of field (the amount of blurry background) achieved in your image is decided by the aperture setting. The wider this aperture opening is, the more light you will let in and the more shallow (blurrier the background) your depth of field will be!
How do I make my aperture wider?
If you’re in manual mode (M on your mode dial) or aperture priority mode (Av or A on your mode dial), look at the F/number such as f/11. You want that number after the F to be as small as possible. This is especially true if you are working with a beginner camera with a lens that doesn’t open very wide. For a beginner lens, this may look like something like f/5.6 or f/4.5. If you can go lower to f/2.0 or so that’s even better!
What if my lens won’t open that wide?
If your lens can only go to something like f5.6 I have a trick for you! Try pulling your subject away from the background to create a more shallow depth of field. If there are no other objects in your depth of field, you can manipulate it to look as if your lens has a shallower DoF than it does! Make sure you also focus on your subject so that your subject is crisp and the rest can fall out of the depth of field and be blurry!
Want to learn more?
Consider checking out my online photography courses and sign up for my FREE photography education email list! I also suggest checking my other photography education blog posts here.
Don’t forget to pin this for later! ⤵️
