Guest Post//Kitty's Bokeh Tutorial

Hello lovely explorers! I hope you're having an excellent day so far! I'm Kitty and I blog over at Kitty & Buck. I'm so pleased to be hanging out with you in Chloe's nook today :) I have a special treat for you, a little trick for adding some fun to your photos. Zing, if you will. Check out my little DIY below, it's really quick and easy, and most importantly, fun! This tutorial works best with a camera lens that has a wide aperture, something around the 1.8 or 1.4 range for you camera nerds. I used a Nikon 50mm 1.4 in case you're interested. It took me about 5 minutes to complete.

1.) You will need some medium-heavy weight matte black card. I used Canson 220gsm (enough to make a ring around your camera lens. You also need tape (preferably dark in color), a pencil, scissors and a pretty shaped hole punch, or a scalpel if you're artistic and want to draw your own shape. Oh, and a ruler.
2.) Choose the lens you will be using, and place it lens side down on the black card.
3.) Carefully trace the lens shape (I used the narrow part of the lens that extends as you focus. If you trace around the wider part, you won't have control over the lens rings, which would be annoying.
4.) Trace a strip of card, which will form a ring around your lens. So make sure it is long enough to wrap all the way around the lens, it doesn't matter if it overlaps. I made mine the width of the ruler, about 1.5 - 2 inches, which worked perfect.

5.) Cut out your strip and your lens-sized circle. Roll the strip firmly around the lens so it fits snug, and then tape it firmly into a ring.
6.) If you want to draw your own shape, draw it into the centre of the circle now. You then need to cut out your shape. The hole punch made this easy! I was worried with my hole punch one, that the punch didn't reach all the way to the centre, but it didn't matter too much. The important thing to not is how wide the aperture opens (you can see by looking into the front of the lens). As long as the aperture 'blades' don't overlap your shape when it sits over the lens, you'll be fine. Be carefull to keep your disc flat, don't bend it to cut it, or you'll have problems later.
7.) Attach the disc to the ring. You can see on my heart-shaped one, I tried to seal any light coming in with tape all the way around the edge. I found this wasn't entirely necessary, if you cut the pieces pretty well, they should fit with just a little tape holding them on.
8. My finished lens hoods, a kitty shape (you can tell, right? I hope!) and a heart shape.

Above you can see how it fits on the camera, and below, some shots I took of fairy lights with the two different filter attached. How cute, right? You can have a person in focus in the foreground and the light spots in the background out out focus. The further away you are from the spots of light, the bigger and more pronounced your bokeh shapes will be. I hope you enjoyed this DIY and I'd love to see what shapes you come up with! There's so many possibilities, so get out some black card and your camera and see where it takes you :)

Kitty

xo

Thanks so much for guest posting today, Kitty! I LOVE this DIY, and I can't wait to give it a try myself!

Xo Chloe.