California is just gorgeous – which is why I have photographed the gas station just outside my hotel window. I figured that if I am on the 8th floor I can at least practice faking a tilt shift lens with some Photoshop loving in Alien Skin Bokeh. Tilt shift lenses cost about $1500-$2500 and are a very specialty lens that I wouldn’t use much so they aren’t very high on my wish list. So I’ll fake it in Photoshop.
Tilt Shift created in Alien Skin Bokeh
Before/After Example of a photograph edited with Alien Skin Bokeh
One of the reasons I upgraded to a digital SLR camera a few years ago as to have the blurred backgrounds in my photographs. A point and shoot camera really is unable to create that for you. Little did I realize the science behind creating that blurred area (called bokeh) was dependent on which lens you used, the focal length of the lens, the distance between the photographer and the subject.
Wide angle lens rarely give the creamy dreamy bokeh as you will find with a long angle lens. And sometimes you don’t have the opportunity or the distance to work with. On top of it – some lenses that really kick butt in this are available to Canon photographers only. I lust after the Canon 50mm and the 85mm lenses that are f/1.2. There have been days I thought I should just buy a Canon 5D as a 3rd camera and then get these two lenses. That would cost me about $5500 – that is a lot of money to drop for the blurred backgrounds.
But there is a software plugin that I am going to buy that helps me create the effects of the Canon f/1.2 85mm lens. And it is a lot cheaper than the $4000 I would have to play for the lens and the camera body.
Alien Skin Bokeh helped me edit the photo above – I first selected the bride and groom with Photoshop’s quick select tools and then I played with the settings in Bokeh. I love it. There are a lot of settings and a lot of features which I won’t go into here. But needless to say I am buying the plugin before the trial software expires.