I can has bokeh

I have a 4.5 years old point and shoot camera

But always dream about those beautiful photos with shallow DoF, bokeh...

I can do that for macro..But portraits?? :(

No DSLR, so what?

Took out of focus images that will be my background


Get them on the TV, and pose in front of it


ta da.. I got what I wanted...!!!!!!!!!!


Similarly

But enough of these..

I've bought this today!!
And can do this with a click of button!

baSIX of Photography

Given a task to photograph a subject in a particular location, different photographers can come up with different results. Different results can be obtained by varying 6 key parameters.

1. Shooting the same subject from a different angle.
2. Keeping the subject in different size and different part of the image.
3. Shooting from different distance from the subject.
4. Choosing how bright or dark the image should be.
5. Shooting with different intentional out of focus of background or foreground in the frame.
6. Shooting with different motion blur, when there are moving objects in the scene.

not 7. Changing the lighting that illuminates the scene. But it changes the scene/subject. And a photographer may not always have liberty to do it.

A photograph can look great or so so, by varying the above 6 parameters. But what looks good or bad is a matter of taste.

• But looks like most great award winning or liked, shared, +1ed photographs, won the audience for what was photographed, more than how it was photographed. It is the subject not the photograph itself. Just like it is the story not the writing that matters most.
• And the professionals seem to use auto-focus a lot. The costlier cameras are made costlier by having more auto-focus points etc... They fall back to manual focus only when AF fails. IOW actually professional camera's are easier to use than a consumer/prosumer cameras with lots of limitations.

Might be continued... this is an excerpt from my very long notes. It continues on to explain how to vary the above 6+ parameters, and which kind of equipment would help achieve them.

Panorama

Played with Hugin. It was fun.




Made using Canon A570 IS + Hugin on openSUSE.

Should try on some great places and outdoors.

I have a scrolling animation of the above image as a Google Gadget in my blog now.