Lens-Artists Challenge: bokeh

Sophia has set us the task of sharing photos that show bokeh, a fancy way of saying that your background is out of focus which puts everyone’s attention on whatever you want to spotlight. 🙂 I use this often in nature shots and here are the first three I came across in one of my files featuring McDowell Forest Preserve in Naperville, Illinois, my spirit park when we lived there. 🙂 Hey, I’m sure “spirit park” must be a thing.

Oops! Sorry, I lied. This first shot is from the our backyard in Naperville where we were blessed with a whole raft of these in season.

Now to McDowell.

I find spider webs in particular benefit from bokeh, don’t you agree?

Monday miscellany

I like to walk down to this lake, walk around it, and reflect on this, that, and the other thing but the lake does its own reflecting as well. Pick up sticks, anyone?

It also provides a nice bit of bokeh.

Up close and personal with a butterfly? Alien? Somethings look different when you get this close, don’t they?

Lens-Artists Challenge #121 – Focus on the Subject

I was excited to see that the Lens-Artists challenge theme would be announced the prior week…until I saw that Patti’s theme was “Focus on the Subject.” OK. Maybe it didn’t matter that I knew in advance. 🙂 I felt marginally better when Tina said she had to ask Patti the direction she planned to go. Me? I figure as long as I can be on-topic (even if not Patti’s emphasis), I should be good to go.

“Focus” can be a noun or a verb. If you don’t literally focus (v.) on your subject, you might get something like I got here, the focus (n.) on everything other than the bird I wanted you to see.

Of course, you might also find that complete lack of focus (accidental) gives an impression that works, such as “speed” here.

The entire shot might be your focus and in focus…

…or your focus might be just what’s in front of you. Anything more would distract and cause the focus not to be on your subject. Let’s all say together, “Bokeh.”

So…if you focus (v.) on your subject, it will bee the thing that enables others to focus (v.) on your focus (n.), causing the flowering of a beautiful relationship. Ha! How could I resists when my focus (n.) is always on making a trip here as delightful an experience as possible? If it works that gives me a buzz! 🙂 Happy Saturday!

In the neighborhood? Please drop in.

Yesterday we woke to the promised winter storm: about 6″ of snow on the ground and still coming down thickly.  It snowed well into the late afternoon, a gloriously beautiful day!  By the time it stopped, it was probably close to 10″, making a walk to the nearby grocery store for buy-one-get-one pizza for National Pizza Day quite a bit of exercise.  More snow’s in the forecast for tomorrow and Sunday.  I may have to head over to the park in the morning!

Choosing the six-word title for today’s post was almost as difficult as choosing how to edit this shot.  Hopefully you’ll enjoy both and hopefully also have a wonder-filled weekend.  I know I will.

Silent Sunday…winter bokeh

Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge Week 4…Simplicity

Sometimes less is more, as Cee demonstrates this week in her “Compose Yourself Photo Challenge”, “Simplicity” edition. The “simplicity” challenge: Show us 4 to 6 photos that you have taken that are extremely simple. Show us your uncropped and unedited versions. Sharpening and saturation is allowed.

Here are my four simple originals:

For some additional fun:  Cropping: show us one before and after cropped simplicity photo.  Color vs. B&W: show us the same photo one color and one black and white photo.

Here’s my cropped photo. ( Click on any photo to see it larger.)

Here are the color and black-and-white versions.