Cherry Blossom Close-Ups – How To Create Smooth Bokeh!

Cherry Blossom Art - Soft Blurred Background Bokeh

This photo of cherry blossom blooms was captured in Branch Brook Park, Essex County, NJ, during the Essex County Cherry Blossom Festival. The beautiful background coloring in this scene is the blurred combination of brown tree branches, white cherry blossoms and green grass. That smooth, creamy background blur effect is what the Japanese call bokeh, or “background blur quality.” To achieve this color palette, I first focused on the foreground blooms and angled my camera to get the right balance of background elements. The background elements are far enough from the in-focus blooms that they became fully blurred, blending their colors.

Modestly priced zoom telephoto lenses can easily achieve this effect with a combination of careful focusing and zoom magnification. With a bit of practice, most low-priced 50-200mm, 55-250mm, 70-300mm zoom telephoto lenses can be used to achieve this effect. I look for blooms (and flowers) that are at least a foot or more away from any background elements. This allows for a very pleasing background blur (or bokeh) while keeping the up-front blooms in sharp focus. Typically, focusing as close as possible to the subject at or near maximum lens magnification creates the smoothest bokeh, or background blur. If you are shooting with Canon DSLR camera,, the low cost Canon 55-250mm IS EF-S lens is very capable for this type of photography. I used this lens for most of my cherry blossom photography. This lens is available for a great price at the trusted online retailer Amazon.com (follow this link): Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

Camera info for this photo: Canon Rebel XS, Canon 55-250mm lens. ISO 200, F8.0, 125mm, 1/500 sec., handheld. -Photo by Don Peterson, Business-to-Consumer Web Design Consultant