Objects in background are more important than they appear

An ornamental light stands guard amid the swirl of colors in my father’s garden. Getting the ornament in focus was no problem. It took some time, however, to get the background behind the light to my liking. I reset my position and tripod height several times before arriving at the composition you see here.

The out-of-focus background in a photograph is called "bokeh." The trick is to get the bokeh to complement the foreground subject without distraction.

Sometimes you have to pay more attention to the background than the object in the immediate foreground.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2006 James Jordan.