HBW – Into the Sun

Lens flare – most of the time, we’re trying to avoid it… we have lens hoods, we change the angle of our shots and we stick our hands up above our lens to shield the shot from the sun – photographers, when you’re employing this technique in public, do you ever get the feeling that people are looking at you like you’re saluting Hitler? if you didn’t before, you will now.

Sometimes though, lens flare adds that perfect something to the photo… a dramatic effect that screams ‘LIGHT!’. When used correctly, it can add interest and drama to an otherwise boring photo. Photoshop even includes a lens flare filter that will add a computer-generated lens flare to a photo… By the way, this could quite possibly be the most hated Photoshop filter among graphic designers.

In the end, as with anything else, it’s all about personal preference.

What does HBW mean? HBW = Happy Bokeh Wednesday – a term in the Flickr community.

What is Bokeh? According to Wikipedia, Bokeh (derived from Japanese bokeaji ボケ味, “blur”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.

Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM