


It has another much more practical use: making beautifully abstract backgrounds in portraits. But here’s the thing: focus blur isn’t just for artsy abstracts. It works especially well if you’ve got a background of specular light sources-like holiday lights or sunlight reflecting off of water. Rendering the scene completely out of focus can be a great way of achieving beautiful, soft swaths of color, light, pattern and texture. Let’s say you want to make an abstract art image. Making deliberately out-of-focus images isn’t an especially common need, but it’s a skill that does come in handy. Here are some popular types of blur, and how you can put them to work in your photos. It can demonstrate the speed of a fast-moving subject, or communicate anxiety with a bit of camera shake, or even create a dynamic attention-grabbing special effect via zoom blur.

But, in some situations blur can actually be a valuable story-telling tool. Whether they’re caused by poor focus, camera shake or a fast-moving subject, blur is not usually desirable. Most photographers would probably agree that blurry images are bad.
