Photography Technique: Bokeh

This is a photography technique purposefully centred around the aesthetic quality of blur. It can be achieved using a wide aperture either by itself or by creating shaped apertures with something simple such as black card/paper. This can be combined with movement.

These shapes are what I am interested in. Creating apertures using the nets of the platonic/primary solids and experimenting with colours to see what effects I can create. Colour choice is relevant because we all subconsciously link colour with emotions, both positive and negative. I will experiment with warm/cold colour palettes to see what feelings I can achieve according to the natural (Platonic) nets and their architectural (Primary) counterparts, and to see whether the colour and shape combinations create varied atmospheres.

This will provide a challenge as I have never made apertures before, but I am intrigued about bokeh and think it could hold a 2D answer to the exploration of the idea that a “machine is a house for living in”. I still plan to look at the 3D models but the deconstruction of them is an avenue that I believe should be explored as the shapes and forms could create their own architectural merit. Further study of the different nets of the shapes will aid in my approach to making the actual 3D shapes too.

Below are some very recent experiments of my own bokeh, currently without shaped apertures (See if you can guess what they are!!):

the Code

Recently, I watched the BBC three part series, The Code [mentioned in earlier blogs]. This was an incredibly insightful programme about the underlying mathematical links within nature. There are numbers and formulae all around us. Often subconsciously we absorb this information as well as much of it being inherent in human nature.

The general overview of the programme – hosted by mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy – is that there is a code which underpins the whole of the natural world, including the extraterrestrial. The three parts of the series are entitled 'Numbers', 'Shapes' and 'Predictions'.

The Shapes part of the series really captured my attention. Symmetry and regularity occurs throughout worldwide cultures and has fascinated human beings for thousands of years. This includes the Greeks who came up with the regular shapes which we now know form the building blocks of nature – the Platonic solids. These consist of:

Tetrahedron : 4 regular triangular sides

Icosahedron: 20 regular triangular sides

Dodecahedron: 12 regular pentagonal sides

Octahedron: 8 regular triangular sides

Cube: 6 square sides

The idea that nature is so regular is fascinating. The mathematical precision of something seemingly random and chaotic is unnerving and therefore enchanting. Throughout the series, there is suggestions as to people being susceptible to an obsession with pattern whether they like it or not. Perhaps it is the reason we, as human beings, are often attempting to organise our lives as we appear to live in chaos.

The regularity of the Platonic solids can immediately be compared to the Primary solids – the architectural building blocks. Le Corbusier studied these shapes within existing architecture. No matter how irregular architecture may seem, these solids always appear within architecture, even if it is just a starting point and the solid becomes skewed or irregular.

(PICTURE TO FOLLOW SOON)

The shapes are:

Sphere

Cylinder

Cube

Cuboid

Square based pyramid.

To me, this highlights that by attempting to override it, one tends to simply end up copycatting nature, but by putting one's own spin on it. Nature is the overriding force and man's constant battle to gain control of nature seems to always be a step behind.

As a base I plan to use the Primary and Platonic solids as the main anchor for my final piece. Ideally they will be 3D models of each shape explored through the media of photography, which would automatically bring in the 2D element. The nets for making these shapes are varied when they are flattened too. There is another avenue that could be explored here. I have mocked them up in Google SketchUp which is an easy way to manipulate the different shapes: