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Christmas is approaching which means that I usually do some digging in my hard drive looking for potential things for my church’s Giftable Art Show.

These were taken many years ago in the Tower Grove South neighborhood of St. Louis. They are handheld and taken at different apertures. In each the focus is on the lights in the foreground. The aperture (or opening) of the lens is open the most in the first image and less and less in the other two. When the lens is wide open, the most light is let in and anything that is not in focus diffuses into lovely blurs, both in the foreground and background. The general term for such blurring is “bokeh,” a loanword from Japanese. The quality of the smoothness of blurring and the shape of blurred light points, can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. And, of course, the better the blurring, generally means the higher the price of the lens.

The characteristics of an image are actually affected by three factors: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, but that lesson will have to wait until another time.