Bokeh is an often discussed aspect of picture quality. A lot of people use the term, but I don’t know how commonly it is understood. Bokeh is a misspelled Japanese word that means fuzziness. In photography, it is used to describe the out-of-focus portion of a photograph. Good bokeh simply means that the quality of the blurry part of an image is pleasant. Obviously what is “good” is subjective, as different people have different tastes. When there are bright points (such as lights) that are out-of-focus in a picture, the camera will render them as blurry orbs, which are sometimes called “bokeh orbs” or “bokeh balls” or “bokeh circles” (depending on who you ask). Sometimes when people discuss “bokeh” they’re specifically talking about these orbs and not the rest of the blurry part of the picture, even though technically all of it is bokeh, and not just the bokeh balls.

In this article we’re going to purposefully create blurry bokeh balls as abstract art. We’re going to do some things in the name of creativity that might seem photographically unusual or even outlandish.

Hold on tight, because things are about to get fuzzy!

Note: This was a Creative Collective article, but now it is available to everyone.

The picture above is an example of how you most commonly see bokeh balls used in an image. The method is simple: subject closely focused to the lens, large aperture, and some background lights. In this case, the subject is holiday decor, the lens is the Fujinon 90mm f/2 at f/2, and the background is a lit Christmas tree. The bokeh balls aren’t the subject—they’re the background—although without them the picture would be a lot less interesting.

A similar technique can be used to make bokeh balls a more prominent part of a picture. Photograph wet glass, such as a car window, focusing on the drops, with some lights in the background. The two pictures below are examples of this. The first is a wet car windshield. The drops in the center are in focus, which is also where the bokeh balls are. Because of contrast, the water drops are secondary to the bokeh, and the fuzzy light circles are the subject. I used a Fujifilm X100V for this picture, programmed with the Kodachrome 64 film simulation recipe. The second picture is actually the glass from a picture frame that I removed and took to downtown Salt Lake City. I sprayed it with water, and focused on the drops. The city lights in the background became bokeh balls, which (again), because of contrast, is the subject. I used the Fujifilm X-T30 and 90mm f/2 lens, and the Jeff Davenport Night recipe.

Let’s take this a step further. What if none of the picture is in focus? What if everything is fuzzy? Certainly nobody actually purposefully captures a completely unfocused picture, right?

One technique is like the picture below. You can still tell what everything is. Even though the picture is entirely fuzzy, you know that it’s a tree with some string lights in it. It was captured with an X100F at f/2.8, manually focused short of the subject so that it would all be out-of-focus.

Let me pause for a moment to talk about gear. In this case the camera doesn’t really matter, but the lens does—sort of. You can use any lens, but I find that telephoto tends to work better than wide-angle. The larger the maximum aperture the better—I used f/2.8 or larger. The close-focus capability of the lens is another factor to consider; you don’t need a macro lens, but it’s good if it can closely focus. You will manually focus the lens—typically, you’ll focus it to the close end, although occasionally you might focus to infinity if you are photographing something close.

What I wanted to do with this project is capture images like Bokeh Abstract at the very top of this article. The pictures would need to be completely out-of-focus (like the one above), but where you cannot tell what it is (like the top picture). Something more fanciful and even perhaps dreamlike—maybe more like that moment between sleep and wake when we’re wiping the slumber from our eyes and attempting to become aware of our surroundings but aren’t quite there yet. I wanted to create abstract art.

Let’s look at some images!

What’s great about this type of photography is that very ordinary and not especially photogenic scenes can become extraordinary. Yes, the tree covered in holiday lights could make a nice picture if in-focus, but out-of-focus it’s much more interesting. The other scenes I promise were not particularly intriguing, but make for compelling abstract pictures nonetheless. These are subjects that you might typically encounter in the course of your day, and, as long as you have a camera with you, the opportunity to create art is there for the taking. These were all captured after dark (after all, you need points of light, and, while not impossible, it is much less practical to do this in daylight), and with days getting shorter (in the northern hemisphere), the opportunities increase to create blurry bokeh balls as abstract art.

You don’t even need to leave your home! Crumple up and then unfold a small sheet of tinfoil. Shine a flashlight at it and—boom!—instant bokeh orbs to capture. That’s how I made the two photographs below. If you are bored one night, try this technique, and see what you capture.

What about the picture at the very top? What is that?

The story behind Bokeh Abstract is interesting. I was sitting on my living room couch, getting ready to transfer the pictures from my camera to my phone. The camera was sitting on my lap, and when I powered it on, that’s what I saw on the rear screen. My four-year-old daughter has a mermaid blanket that’s covered in sequins, which was right in front of me reflecting the ceiling light. I quickly captured it before anything changed. After I snapped the picture, she got up and left the room, taking the blanket with her. It really was by happenstance that the lens was facing just right (and out of focus just right), and I had the awareness to snap the picture the moment that I saw it. That was an easy-to-miss picture opportunity that I was fortunate to capture. Keep your eyes peeled for not just lights, but reflected lights, too!

The Oxford dictionary defines abstract art as “art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.” I don’t think any of these pictures will ever find themselves in an art exhibit, but they’re absolutely abstract art nonetheless. Maybe they’d make an interesting series if I captured enough of them.

Now it’s your turn! As the days get shorter, opportunities increase to create abstract photographs. Use a large aperture and don’t focus correctly, so that the points of light in the frame are bokeh orbs. See what interesting colors and patterns (or even randomness) that you can discover.