Valentine’s Baby Boy Session-

DIY Heart Bokeh Filter

Today is my baby boy’s first Valentine’s Day, so I finally tried a technique I’ve wanted to experiment with for years. I made a DIY heart camera lens filter out of cardstock and attached it to my lens. The effect makes the twinkle lights in the background heart shaped. You can do this with a lot of different shapes, like stars, snowflakes, etc. I did do some images without the filter too.

In order to create this technique you need…

1. DSLR camera
2. A Lens that allows you to open up your aperture to at least a 2.8 f stop or lower.
3. The subject needs to be at least 4 ft. from the twinkle lights.
4. The photographer needs to be about 3 ft. from the subject
5. DIY heart “filter” (see last 2 images)

I found that shooting with the filter, made a vignette, or dark edges. It also made for a low contrast image so I had to pump up the contrast in editing, but I love the way they turned out!