If you follow the general photography scene, it’s a bit hard to miss all of the recent photos that use a Photoshopped “tilt-shift” effect to make life size objects look miniature. Flickr has over 2800 photos tagged with tiltshift as well as 30 semi-related groups. The effect is actually very easy to achieve, once you find the right photo. The tutorial I learned from is here, on Receding Hairline.

What I haven’t seen much of is this effect applied to food photography, and I think there could be some interesting results.
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Bokeh is a Japanese term used to describe the quality of a background blur. Is it smooth or is it harsh? Do the colors and light blend together in silky, natural combination? Or are there wiry bits that look artificial?

I’ve always loved photos that had extremely narrow depth of field (DOF), and marry a sharply focused subject with a creamy soft backdrop. It simplifies the photo and makes it both pleasing and understandable. Looking back through my photos, especially my food photos, a great number of them are shot with an aperture of 3.5 to 1.4.

However, I had never heard of bokeh or given much thought to how the blur looked until someone left a comment on one of my flickr photos inviting me to the Bokeh: Smooth and Silky group on Flickr. Now I am hooked and have started to look at my photos in a new light.
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