To Bokeh or Not to Bokeh

The term bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke, which means "blur" or "haze", or boke-aji, the "blur quality". The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility.

Basically, bokeh is the quality of out-of-focus or “blurry” parts of the image rendered by a camera lens – it is NOT the blur itself or the amount of blur in the foreground or the background of a subject.

A good bokeh pleases our eyes and our perception of the image and therefore, the background blur should appear soft and “creamy”, with smooth round circles of light and no hard edges.

Here is how we Bokeh at PurePhoto: