What is Bokeh photography?
DIYPhotography.net did a great job of describing bokeh as

…an adaptation from a a Japanese word meaning blur. In photography this term is used to describe the quality of the areas in the picture which are not in focus.

How to make a bokeh photo
To describe it is easy. To pull it off might take a little practice. There’s much more detail in the article I linked to above, but here are some basics.

What you need:
1. A camera with a manually adjustable aperture setting (most DSLRs will do)
2. Black construction paper
3. Uniquely shaped hole punch
4. Pencil or pen
5. Scissors
6. Tape

Here’s the heart shape hole punch I found at a craft store. It was about $6, I think, and a manly shade of pink. The website has a few other choices, as well.

What to do:
1. Place your camera lens on the construction paper and trace it with your pen or pencil.
2. Cut out the circle (A), but cut it so that it has three or four little tabs (B) on it.
3. Cut a strip of construction paper (C) that is just longer than the circumference of the circle. If you’re unsure, just cut it long enough that it can wrap all the way around your lens and the ends overlap.
4. Wrap the strip (C) around the outer end of your lens and tape the end of the paper to the piece it’s overlapping.
5. Using your hole punch, punch a hole in the center of the circle of paper (A).
6. Hold the circle (A) to the strip (C) and fold over and tape the tabs (B) to the strip (A). to complete a DIY Bokeh lens hood.
7. Adjust the aperture to its lowest setting.

You should now be ready to make some pretty cool photos. It seems to work best with lots of smaller lights. Bust out that strand of Christmas lights and start shooting.

My semi-successful attempt
Using a borrowed camera (I still haven’t bought a DSLR for myself), I attempted to create my own Bokeh mask with an Exacto knife and ever-waning patience. The outcome, I’m sure, would have been more favorable if I had used the hole punch.

Other fun things to try
Contre-jour
French for ‘against daylight’, refers to photographs taken when the camera is pointing directly toward the source of light. An alternative term is backlighting.

Digiscoping
A method of obtaining photos using a digital camera through a spotting scope, telescope or, less often, binoculars.

Try your own techniques and post links to your results in the comments. I’d love to see them.

We all know what a tattoo is. They’ve been around for centuries and surely will continue to decorate the skin for centuries to come. Time only enhances them by adding vibrant colors and ink that shows up best under black light. While mothers have always cringed at the thought of their baby getting a tattoo, most of us know someone with a tattoo or two and some of us have our own. Recently, I had a couple more done, so I thought I would post them and some that other people have that are equally as geeky.

I’ll go first

Above is a photo showing all my ink. Almost 3 years ago, I got a parallel port tattooed on my back. That’s the port in the middle that is a little lighter than the rest. I have been in love with computers since the first time I was on one in the early 80’s and it’s something I am very passionate about. Years ago, I wanted to get a bar code, but by time I got around to it, everyone else had one, so I opted for a parallel port instead. It was my first and when it was done, I immediately started thinking about what else I wanted done. Life kept me busy and I eventually started thinking about it again and worked out what I would want next. Last weekend, I headed to Americana Tattoo and added to my collection. The bottom row is a FireWire logo, followed by two FireWire ports. At the top, I finally got my bar code. I figured I shouldn’t care what everyone else has and did it anyway. However, I did make it a little more original. I used an online bar code image generator to generate a Code 128 barcode. I chose this standard because it’s easy to scan. The bar code should actually scan as “Joe” and the numbers underneath it spell out “Joe” in binary. These tattoos are just a small part of a much bigger plan.

Other geeky and nerdy tattoos
There’s a ton of geeky tattoo photos out there on the net, but I just grabbed all these from the Geeky Tattoos pool on Flickr. I had been planning a Matrix port tattoo to go with all my other ports, but I think it needs to be just a bit lower than the one below. I love the Tank Girl tat, because I’m a big Tank Girl fan. Of course, there’s the binary and the HTML-like tags (which are also on my list). Finally, there’s a bigger version of the FireWire logo, proving I’m not the only one crazy enough to ink that into my skin, and the “OMG LOL” tattoo, which has me thinking, well, “OMG! LOL!”.

Now I have questions for you.
1. Do you have any ink? If so, how many, what are they, and where on your body? (picture links are welcome)
2. What’s the geekiest (or your favorite) tattoo you’ve seen?
3. Any plans for geeky tattoos?

Sponsored Post:

I have been slacking on site reviews for a couple reasons. Primarily, a lot of the reviews people want me to do for free aren’t related to technology or the web at all. Then there’s the paid reviews. $100 sounds nice, but not to review something you don’t care about. It’s not fair to you or to the person paying for the review. StylishDesign.com, on the other hand, is about what I have a passion for, so I present to you my first site review in a while.
(added note for clarification: $100 was not the price of this review. $100 was the amount offered by another company that I turned down.)

What is Stylish Design?
In this context, it’s a web site about the many ingredients that go into making web content. The About page still contains WordPress’ default example page content, but here’s the gist of the site, according to the homepage:

Stylishdesign.com is a blog about web designing and other stuff related to web design. On this blog you’ll find a lot of information about search engine optimization, web directories, different tools/softwares, CSS, website templates and so on.

Usability and Aesthetics
One thing I don’t like about a site is when it’s way too cluttered up and too hard to read the content. At the end of the day, the quality of your content is just barely more important than the usability of your site. SytlishDesign doesn’t have a super fancy site design. Instead, they have a very clean and still aesthetically pleasing design that makes reading SD articles what it should be: easy. The latest article is prominently featured at the top of the page and additional articles with preview snippets are below it. For a new site, it looks very professional, and that can make all the difference between success and failure.

Content is King
That is the saying, isn’t it? Stylish Design is still a pretty new blog, but they have already formed a content pattern. It seems that Robert is much more in tune with the server side of the web equation, writing articles about serving up static web pages, HTTP Request headers (very important to know about when developing dynamic sites), and my personal favorite, functions and codes.

While I still see a CSS article void that I imagine will be filled soon enough, there is at least one article that touches on SEO, as well. It talks about how submitting content to article directories can be good for traffic. Design is pretty negotiable and programming is straight-forward, but SEO is a tricky beast and I am anxious to see more articles from them in that arena.

I don’t think that I’ve yet mentioned that I am a amateur photographer, armed with a slightly older digital camera, little time, and some creativity. I think I have taken some good photos, but I still view myself as a newbie and I’m always looking for improvement. I could use a camera upgrade, but I’m learning new tricks and getting more ideas all the time, too.

A year ago, I found out about a site called JPG Magazine. The concept of the site/magazine is laughably simple. Photographers (amateurs included) submit their photography to the site. Members of the site vote on which photos should make the magazine. Chosen photos are then placed into the print magazine and the photographers, in many cases, receive compensation for their work.

I have an account. You should go check it out. What drew me to the site, initially was the thought of someone like me having one of my photos in a print magazine. Who wouldn’t want that? I still haven’t gotten anything printed, but the site has other advantages, even if you never make a print edition. Other people’s photographs often get my creative juices flowing and help me think about different things to shoot and different ways to shoot things. Lately, I’ve really been wanting to get a more professional camera with a macro lens for closer shots.

(click any image to see it full size)

One feature of the site that makes me go back pretty often is the themes. Every month, they release a handful of new themes to which you may submit a photo. Of those, a few will be themes for the next issue. You can only submit one photo per theme, which makes the photographer really think about which single photo to submit. The themes are one of my favorite sources of new ideas, mainly because I find myself looking for a new photograph to shoot that can fit in one of the themes. For example, the recent Delectable theme inspired my late night “Chocolate Alien” photograph. I should remind you that I’m an amateur here.

If you’ve been tinkering with your camera and looking for inspiration or for a place to share your photographs and get opinions on your work, check this site out.

I went for dinner at a new Thai place tonight and saw these animated figures across the street (see video below). I’m not sure if it is significant to a specific event at the Phoenix Art Museum, but I thought it was interesting anyway.

The display is rather large, as can be seen here during the day: