Christmas Bokeh

I'm on a homeschool message board and one of the forums there is for photography lovers. Each week there's a fun assignment -- like photograph a favorite Christmas ornament, show an example of unusual lighting, seasonal pictures, and so forth. Well, right now the assignment is Christmas Bokeh. I've never really played around with bokeh shots much. In all honesty, I'm a point-n-shoot type photographer. Heck, most of the time I take my wildlife pictures from INSIDE my house!

However, I thought it would be fun to see if I could get any bokeh shots with my simple, little camera. If you don't know what bokeh is, click here. Bokeh is Japanese for blur or haze. Basically, from what I can tell, it's when you photograph something and there's a blurred effect in the out of focus area of the picture. At least that's what I think it is. The link is from Wiki, but it gives you a better idea than how I could explain it.

I've been playing around with my camera and came up with a few images. It's not too hard with Christmas lights strung all over the place, so I imagine it would be more challenging without them. If anything, it will give me something to work on. I'd like to give it a try with Rick's camera and lenses. So, as you can see, I've been playing around with some pictures. Nothing says Christmas than a Captain Jack Sparrow nutcracker, huh? Or how about Obi Wan with presents stuck on his light sabre? At least it's festive, and hey, I even managed to get some blurred effects in there, too.