Seeing Stars

A few months ago, I found this kit that you could attach to your lens to make the bokeh* in your photo change into different shapes, rather than the typical circle look. I thought it seemed really fun but was not willing to pay $25 just for a funky effect that I would only use once in a while. So I didn't get it, but have continued to think about how cool it looked.

Then, last night, Rob and I were talking about it and looked at the website again. We realized, hey!, I could make some myself. So I googled the product this morning, and surprise, surprise!, found some tutorials. The best tutorial I found told me that pretty much the only way for it to work would be on a lens that could achieve an aperture of 2.8 or lower. That cut out all of my lenses except my nifty-fifty. So I made one out of paper to test it out. And it worked!

Then I got smart, and realized I could use my Silhouette to cut these bokeh filters for me. I hadn't yet used my Silhouette to straight-out design anything from scratch so this was an adventure all in it's own. Turned out to not be hard at all and I now have a template that I can have it cut any shapes I want when I come up with them!

So, that's the explanation, here's what I came up with in my experimentation with a star filter tonight!

So, could you find the stars in each photo? It's not supposed to be glaringly obvious, just a subtle change of shape to the blurry background circles. It'll be lots of fun and look so very, very cool when I can take pics of a person with everything blurred in the background to a different shape!

Love & Smooches!

Jocelyn

P.S. Any of my photographer friends, if you want a set, shoot me a message, and I can whip up some for your lens too!

*Translation for non-photographers - Bokeh is the term for the blurred items in the background of a photo, which typically become a blurry circle. With this, I can make that circle into any shape I want!