Heart-Shaped Bokeh for Valentine’s Day Photos

This is a very simple and creative DIY to add beautiful heart-shaped bokeh to your photography. If you don’t feel like overwhelming your pictures (and shopping list) with a whole bunch of props, this is a great way to turn a regular portrait into a fun and festive themed shoot.

You can read on in more details on how to control your bokeh circles in this post. Also, check out this tutorial on how to add ANY shape to your bokeh.

This blog is a spin on the two tutorials I shared before, adapted for Valentine’s day.

What you need for Heart-Shaped Bokeh

My mood board for this photoshoot consisted simply of a pink couch (I know, convenient 🙂 ), my wedding bouquet, and string lights. That’s it! The little man was wearing a soft yellow shirt, which I though matched the blush pink pretty nicely. Not wearing pink also helped with not getting merged into the background.

I cut out a heart-shaped hole in the middle of a black circle. The heart should be a bit smaller than the size of your lens aperture. You will see a little bit of vignette because of it, but you can either clean it up in post-processing, or embrace the look. I’ve ended up with a combination of the two.

I hung the string lights on the wall, and moved the couch a few feet away, to make sure the lights would blur nicely. Check out the bokeh tutorial if you need help, but the main point is that the further you move your model away form the lights, the larger are the bokeh circles (or in our case, bokeh hearts).

Taking pictures with Shaped Bokeh

And then it’s just the hardest part: getting my little model to cooperate. The bouquet was not very interesting, so I only got a handful of shots before he got bored. Still, more than enough. Having the heart-shaped aperture can also affect the way your lens focuses. For me, the autofocus struggled, but I still had a handful of good, in-focus shots. But in the future, I may consider switching to manual focus. Not sure, if I’ll be faster, but worth a try!

Overall, I am very happy with the way the pictures turned out! especially considering how “cooperating” Everett was 🙂 What kind of creative shaped bokeh should I do next?