Ghosts in the machine

 

Here is a new technique that I have been experimenting with lately.  Well, it's new to me at least.  I call it "bokeh fusion".  I always enjoy seeing the wonderful shots that folks take that either incorporate a lot of bokeh, or are pure bokeh.  I just think they are cool.  So, I recently had the idea to merge some pure bokeh images together, sort of like you do via the HDR process, except that these are not images of the same thing but rather are completely different.  Here is what I did:  step 1 is to of course take a couple of bokeh images, which I do by setting my lens to Manual Focus, and then purposefully blurring it, then step 2 is to open up Photomatix, but instead of "Generate HDR", you select "Exposure Blending".  I have done some exposure blends in Photomatix on my HDR shots before, and generally find that I like the result.  There are only a couple of settings that you can experiment with, unlike all the sliders used for tonemapping, but you can create some pretty cool stuff.  In this shot, the 1st image is the blue lights in the center, which are from the front of my wireless router.  The 2nd image includes both the outer orange ring from a chandelier in a restaurant and the white spot just off-center which was a distant window behind the chandelier.  It is fun to experiment - hope you like it!

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