Bokeh Élite

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About Bokeh Élite

This group intends to showcase some of the very best bokeh pictures to be found on Flickr. Many other bokeh groups exist, I belong to some and I've been admin of others, including the very large Bokeh : Smooth and Silky group.

It is mainly because that group had become too big, and because no consensus was to be found to enforce stricter rules that would stop the group's pool from being used as a dumping grounds for snapsohts of dubious quality, that I decided to resign my position and create this new group.

Here the rules will be very clear, and enforced. They are simple, and can be described as follows :

1. Bokeh is just another word for blur. But blurry areas in a photograph can be coarse and "rugged", or they can be smooth, velvety, silky, whatever you choose to call it. You get the gist. This is the only kind of bokeh that will be admitted here.

2. In order to be fully appreciated, quality bokeh needs to be set off against in-focus elements. In other words, photographs that willl be completely, or almost totally, out of focus, will not be accepted here, regardless of whether they include the direct light sources that many people have come to refer to as "bokeh shapes". So, remember : photographs need to, and shall, contain elements in sharp focus to be admitted to the pool.

3. The use of a shallow dept of field, and hence the obtainment of velvety bokeh, needs to be deliberate. Therefore, photos that exhibit minimal amount of bokeh in slightly out-of-focus areas, will be rejected from the pool.

4. No photos with just the sky posing as bokeh, please ! And remember that backgrounds consisting of slightly blurry, uniform color painted walls, cannot pass as velvety bokeh !.

5. It is strongly advisable that photos posted to this group be viewable in "Large" size and at least 700 pixels in their largest dimension. This is not an absolute requirement, but if there is a doubt as to whether a given photo meets the group's criteria, and if that cannot be positively assessed because the photo is too small and cannot be viewed in a larger size, then it will be deleted from the pool.

6. The level of quality that is expected justifies, I believe, the "one-photo-per-day" rule. I however reserve the right to set up a previous review system of all subsmissions, if necessary.

Thanks to you all, and let's start building the best bokeh group Flickr has ever seen ! We're not looking to increase membership per se, we won't award glittery GIFs, nor make comments mandatory ; we're just on our way to creating something we will hopefully be proud of, collectively !