Star bokeh. Have you ever seen it before? I adore it, especially at Christmastime and for the Fourth of July. I bet you’re wondering how I achieved it. I’ll tell you because I’m cool like that. 😉 I found this DIY tutorial on it a couple of years ago, and I couldn’t WAIT to try it out. I had seen it done before on Christmas tree lights, but I wondered if it was possible to do for fireworks. It is. And it’s amazing.

For all of you budding (and already-budded) photogs out there, here is the tutorial I found. In this one they used a heart shape. I think you could really do any shape you want. I was lucky enough to find a star-shaped hole puncher at Meijer last year, and it was only one dollar. A dollar well-spent, if you ask me. 😉

Once you’ve made your little black cover, make sure to put your camera in manual focus, not auto. And then make your picture blurry, not in focus. The blurrier your shot is, the bigger the bokeh ends up being. It’s been fun to me to experiment with that part of the bokeh. I find that, overall, I prefer my bokeh to be about in the middle; not too big, and not too small for you to barely even notice it.

If you’re trying to catch something fast like fireworks, make sure that your shutter speed is fast (something at least over 1/250s), but possibly quite a bit faster depending on how much light you have. In the shot with my house, I still had to add in some fill light in post-processing so that you could see the background. It helped too that we did fireworks a little before it was pitch black. Kids. 😉

Let me know if you have any more questions on how to achieve this. I’m an open book! Happy fourth to my fellow Americans! I love our country, and I’m so grateful for the privileges we enjoy. God bless America.

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