Sunday, October 5, 2008

My bokeh is bigger than yours

Cars don't really fascinate me, lifting weights isn't my thing, I don't drink, and guns are boring. In terms of macho-ness, I'm just chillin', man - what's to prove! But the one expression of tradional, societally-taught manliness I will claim is the bokeh I get with my Canon 85mm L-series f1.2 lens. Sure, it's no Stanley Kubrick / Barry Lyndon f0.7 lens (or an out-of-production 50mm f1.0 Canon) but one thing is for sure: my bokeh is bigger than yours.
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Bokeh is a Japanese word used to describe the background blur achieved using lenses with a large aperture (or special effects lenses like tilt-shift & lensbabies) which give a large depth of field. In the process of lens construction, it is both difficult and expensive to manufacture high performance lenses with large apertures, thus a celebration of traditional manhood and patriarchy is achieved after one has purchased and photographed with this heavy piece of glass.
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Photo above is one I took while momentarily distracted by raindrops on a car hood in New York, while on a shoot with Sarah Renfro. Shot very, very late at night. My mommy wouldn't approve.