I wrote the following post on Tumblr in response to a friend's experience in a photography class. I thought I should probably have posted it here as well as one further attempt to answer the question "what is bokeh?".
Friend Amy signed up for a photography course in Edmonton to keep herself from going stir crazy in what she swears is the most boring place on earth. To her credit, she signed up for the “advanced” course, which is awesome. To kick off the class, the instructor passed around a quiz listing a pile of photography terms and asked the students to pick the correct answer from among the multiple choices given.
To Amy’s surprise, one of the terms was “Bokeh.”
Apparently she wasn’t paying attention when I explained what that word was all about, but she was able to parse out the answer by process of elimination, which is great.
What wasn’t so great was when she pronounced the word as “bokeh” (rhymes with “okay”, sounds like it could almost be describing the bunch of flowers a bride throws), but her instructor tried to correct her, pronouncing the word as “boca”.
That ain’t right.
It’s pronounced like “bokay,” to rhyme with “okay.” If you want to know why, please read on.
