Aaminah Mir Photography

An industry that uses bokeh incredibly is cinema.

The Dark Knight (2008) - movie

Euphoria (2019) - show

Toy Story (2019) - animated movie

From movies to even the bright cinematic lights at movie premiers (below), bokeh is massively connected to cinema.

Jackie Higgins is a writer, filmmaker and journalist, often exploring a variety of  subjects through her practice. 

In this book, Higgins explains modern photography through looking at 100 key photographs from within the last 20 years, examining their inspirations and processes for each piece of work. ome images are purposefully over exposed, out of focus and composed badly, and so Higgins unpicks the possible meanings and levels to the somewhat controversial images that, as the audience, we might have had different expectations of.

This book proves that there’s more to photography than simply pointing a camera somewhere and clicking the shutter, and that not all images require conventional perfection.

Like the work in progress show, I will be displaying my images in a similar line-up layout, with the lighter and slightly more in focus images on the left, and the darkest most out of focus images at the end on the right..

-drawings

-notes

photo & upload:

-Test prints from uni

-Test prints and test papers from printspace

Final Image Details:

Size: A6

Quantity: 25

Paper type: Metallic (from the printspace)

Mounting for each image: White foam board, 5mm (done myself)

‘Dear forever you didn’t last’, Tenia Prokalamou

The image above by Prokalamou looks extremely similar to images I took during my ninth shoot.

‘Bokeh’, Ludvigem

Bokeh- deriving from the Japanese word ‘boke’ meaning ‘blur’ or haze- isn’t only the blurring of an image but also the aesthetic quality of the blurring. This can be done by using a shallow depth of field, highlighting a subject whilst the background is out o focus, or creating an array of interesting effects using light.

For this show, I compiled a group of images from all of my shoots and arranged them in a light to dark pattern. These images varied in sizes, from a little smaller than A5 to a little  smaller than A6.

Final Display:

Depth of Field

Depth of field is the range of acceptable focus on a shot or photo- it refers to the area in front of the camera lens that is sharp and in focus. Selective focus draws the audiences‘ attention on a specific person, place or object.

An object of person closer to the camera might be solely in focus if the background contain unimportant information/imagery.

Bokeh can also be used to portray the emotions of a person, or atmosphere of a place. It should not be used unnecessarily and only when it truly adds to the scene or image.

Shallow Depth of Field= where part of the frame is soft or out of focus

Deep Depth of Field= where the entire frame, from the foreground to the background, is in focus

Aperture, focal length and focus distance affect depth of field:

Aperture

This affects depth of field the most:

-the wider the aperture, the more shallow the depth of field

-the narrower the aperture, the deeper the depth of field

Focal Length

The longer the lens, the shallower the depth of field is.

Focus Distance

The closer the focus is to the camera, the bigger the depth of field is 

At night, the motorway is full of twinkling vehicle light, wether blurry or not.

During the day I took images in Elephant and Castle of everyday occurences, such as a seeing a herd of pigeons.

Later on in the evening, I walked through and around Walthamstow market- shops were still open and lights were lit on the streets which helped me capture the type of images I’ve been focusing aesthetically on.

The dark background really made the lights stand out as they are two very contrasting colours, shapes and tones.

On this rainy day in the afternoon, I walked along the river Thames on the Southbank-one of the most famous tourist attractions in the world.

While exploring this exhibition, I noticed that a lot of people around me  trying their best at photographing what they were seeing. I decided to capture the colours and shapes through distorting the focus while taking my photographs of the work.