Steamy Cup of Bokeh

[nerwin]

I've always wanted to try this but instead of copying others exactly, I wanted to make mine more moody.

I originally wanted to make it color but I didn't have a mug that had a neutral color but I had a mug that was orange which I knew would stand out in black and white better than say a blue or black mug. I also only had Christmas colored led string lights. So it was settled, its going to be a black and white photo.

I used my night stand as a table and used gaffers tape to attach the string lights to the wall, you can't even see the gaffers tape! I love gaffers tape....

Anyways I used my tripod and used live view to zoom in to focus, though it isn't perfect as the DOF is pretty narrow as I wanted the out of focus "bokeh" balls to be big, but round so I stopped it down just a little (f/2.2).

I have black out blinds so I closed them all but I wanted just a little bit of fill light to show the mug so I used my homemade LED light I made to add just enough fill.

Of course it wasn't complete until I processed it in Lightroom.

D610 + 50 1.8G @ f/2.2, 1/50th & ISO 100

I never looked up how to do this either, I just did it. I thought I did pretty well and it was a learning experiencing for me.

 

[Derrel]

I think this might look cooler in full color.

 

[nerwin]

I think this might look cooler in full color.

I wasn't keen on the colors of the LEDs, that's why I went black and white. But I'll share the color one, just give me a minute to process it lol.

 

[nerwin]

Here is a colored version that I did using natural light.

 

[KmH]

Can we edit your photos?

 

[nerwin]

Can we edit your photos?

Go for it.

 

[KmH]

For me the cup is to dark in your version for the Hollywood type bokeh effect to be work as well as it could to mimic steam rising off a hot cup of whatever.

Using Camera Raw and your color image I changed it to gray scale and used the color sliders to set the brightness of the lights.
I then opened the photo in Photoshop, duplicated the Background layer using the Camera Raw filter and globally added Clarity (+50) and Contrast (+30) to the photo.
Lastly I added a very narrow black border around the perimeter of the frame.

 

[Designer]

I like the color version.

 

[pjaye]

I like both but really do prefer the color one. I'm going to have to try this.

 

[annamaria]

Both are cool but I prefer number one. Perhaps the cup could be just a tad more visible. It's really a neat concept.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jcdeboever]

Very creative, I like the approach.