“Do you play croquet?”
A shot of my custom Alice in Wonderland Queen of Hearts minifigure, using shaped bokeh effects. This shot took a long time to accomplish and required lots of experimenting with lighting. The heart-shaped bokeh was achieved by cutting a small heart shape out of a piece of black paper, then placing in front of the lens. This technique only works with lenses with long focal lengths, and not wide-angle lenses. The majority of my best photos were taken with my 28mm Nikkor lens, however custom bokeh effects only work with my 50mm or 110mm lenses — which are both older, cheaper, and don’t have nearly the image quality of my 28mm. I strung a few sets of white and red Christmas lights over a dark red cloth, and through the custom aperture shape, they turned to hearts. Later in Photoshop I slightly altered the background by running a swirl pattern over the hearts to create the effect of them spinning.