Bokeh Shapes

If you follow me on Instagram then you saw me post a cool picture of my Christmas tree.  Today I’m going to show you how easy it is to make your Christmas tree lights into bokeh shapes.

 
Trace your lens cap onto a darkish piece of paper, like construction paper.

Cut the circle out and fold it in half.

Then in half again.

This allows you to find the center or the circle.

To help you see the center trace a small cross.

Figure out which shape you want and trace it in the center of the circle.
Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this. 

Cut a long strip of paper that will wrap around the circle to form a tube.  Tape this strip around your circle.  Make sure there are no gaps.

It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done. 🙂

Slide the tube on you lens, and you are ready.

Note:  it’s just going to fit on the very edge of your lens.

If you are taking pictures of just the lights, then you will want to make them out of focus.
Here is our tree in focus.

If you look really closely you can see the hearts, but they are really small/ not really bokeh.

Here is the tree slightly out of focus.

 Now you can see the hearts much better.

And here is the tree way out of focus.

I think my favorite is when the tree is slightly out of focus.  The hearts aren’t too big, and they aren’t overlapping too much.

I also took a picture of our mantel.

Here is star shaped bokeh.

You can also use this technique to create bokeh shapes in the background of your subject.

Annabelle was sitting about 8 feet away from the tree when I took this picture,