klair, originally uploaded by ombakpictures.

Camera: Nikon D3s
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Model: Klair

time of the picture taken is nearly sunset in Doha (5.26pm). so in order to compensate back with the surrounding getting darker, I have to up the ISO to 400. therefore I can continue using shutter at high speed. for this picture the shutter is still 1/250 sec to freeze any moments of the subject.

to throw out the background in blur (bokeh), I use aperture at f/2.8 and by using a telephoto lens, its even enhance the bokeh.. the longer the focal length & shallow the depth of field, the background is more bokeh..

what is “BOKEH” means..

Origin
The term comes from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality”. The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility.

The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, when Mike Johnston, the editor at the time, commissioned three papers on the topic for the March/April 1997 issue; he altered the spelling to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers, saying “it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable”. Bokeh replaced the previous spelling boke that had been in use at least since 1996, when Merklinger had also suggested “or Bokeh if you prefer.”

The term bokeh has appeared in photography books at least since 1998. It is sometimes pronounced /bo’k/ (boke-uh).

In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.” Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting— “good” or “bad” bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.

Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it often associated with such areas. However, bokeh is not limited to highlights, as blur occurs in all out-of-focus regions of the image. Bokeh can also be viewed by forcefully blurring one’s vision while looking at a small light, like an LED.

Source: Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh)