![]() I also think it's kind of a beautiful concept to attempt to portray in a photograph. Using bokeh in this sense would be very similar to another use of the word bokeh in Japanese to describe the mental states of individuals with dementia, that their memories and emotions may be indistinct or "fuzzy" or blurry. I believe they also used the term bokeh to describe the blurred elements in the photo. The idea of composing with both distinct and indistinct elements in a photo would be analogous to composing with both positive and negative space. I also believe they used the word "bokashi" to describe the act of blurring an element of a photo intentionally as a compositional tool. So I recall a while ago reading about a Japanese photographer (or group of photographers?) that intentionally blurred elements in their photographs (by deliberate use of focus or by motion blur and perhaps using other means to obscure a subject) and used these blurred elements to portray uncertainty or the unknown or the "fuzzily remembered" in their photographs. ![]() ![]() Although I realize that 99% of photographers will adhere to one or the other or both of these definitions, I believe that the use of this word in the context of photography goes back a little further and I'm hoping someone that shares my interest in etymology (and maybe has some skills in the Japanese language) might be able to weigh in to help me with this little mystery. in addition to being a camera nerd I'm a bit of a language nerd. A photo can have creamy or nervous or busy or interesting bokeh. There is also another common, useful, and very much related sense of the word, that "bokeh" is the aesthetic quality of the the out of focus areas in a photograph. I acknowledge that this is a commonly accepted and useful definition for this particular term. A lens can have good or bad or interesting or strange bokeh. This is bokeh as an optical property of a lens. One poster in that thread contended that the only definition of bokeh is the very technical, optics-related definition that bokeh is the way that a lens renders out of focus highlights. I was just participating in a little conversation on the m43 forum here:
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