Okay, the little balls of blurriness and the backgrounds of our images. As photographers, we often talk about how many there are around they are, but never seem to think of them as more than just blurry spheres of light. In this video, I want to change that. I want to use them to create anything from squares and hearts to writing. Yes, in-camera writing. But before we get into the nitty-gritty details, let's start with the basics. To achieve this effect, I'm going to place a piece of cardboard with a cut out in the middle and front of the lens. Later, the shape of the cut out will determine the shape of the bouquet. But before I can do any of that, I first had to figure out three things. First, what kind of lens to use? Second, how big our designs can be, and third, how to mount the flimsy piece of cardboard in a reliable way onto the lens. So let's start with the lens selection. I want to make sure to use the lens with the biggest aperture you own. For me, that's a 5th millimeter 1.8. If you don't have a lens like that, don't worry. You can still use this technique. Your design is just going to be a bit small. Speaking about the size of my design, let's figure out how big we can make it. To do that, I start by cutting out a small square from a piece of cardboard. As you can see here, I begin by drawing a rough outline of my lens. This makes it a lot easier, finding the center where later, need to place my cutout. By holding it in front of the lens, we can see the effect we are going for for the first time. Some other things you might notice is not only that we lose a lot of the blurriness in the background, but also gain a lot of wind getting. The easiest way to fix this is to increase the size of the cutout. Now, if the cutout is too big, the bokeh is just going to be a circle again. But if it's too small, we'll have lots of fin-yetting and lose a lot of the blurriness in the background. To find perfect dimensions for the design, I'm going to increase the size of the square step by step, holding it in front of the lens every time. Now, when the edges start around over, I know that the design can be slightly smaller than that. In my case, I have a circle of about 18 millimeters in diameter to work with. Always remember that the size is lens-specific, so you need to make different size designs for different lenses. After having figured out what lens to use and how big my design can be, there's only one inconvenience left that I want to get rid of. And that's the mounting of the piece of cardboard. Because, although it does work by just holding it in front of the lens, like it did in the previous step, this is definitely not ideal. And I actually came up with two different solutions to this problem. The first is using a simple step up ring. All I have to do is to cut out a circle from the black cardboard. The diameter of the circle is equal to the higher diameter of the step up ring. So in my case, 52 millimeters. This allows me to just slot in the piece of cardboard underneath the thread of the step up ring. Allowing me to easily switch between different designs. The other solution I came up with is very similar. Instead of using the step up ring, though, I use a UV filter. This allows me to have floating elements in my designs, as you can see here. No matter if you decide to use the step up ring or the UV filter, both can be easily screwed onto the front of the camera, holding your design firmly in place. Talking about the designs, I first started trying simple geometric shapes, like squares, triangles and rectangles. These are not only easy to cut out, but also give a quite unique touch to the image. I think shapes like these would work great for science fiction themed shoots or short films. After that, I tried less abstract shapes, or more specifically, I tried a simple hard shape and the letter X. Although I don't think that this would work for a whole shoot or short film, these would be a great way to emphasise certain emotions within a story. Admittedly, I had quite a hard time thinking of ideas with these sign-based designs. So, if you have ideas for creative aperture designs, let me know in the comments below. Now, as I showed before, I did figure out how to realise floating elements in my designs. At this point, I thought why not experiment with that a bit more. And so I did. I used the cutouts from previous designs and placed them on the UV filter using a small amount of double-sided tape. In my opinion, more geometric shapes like squares or triangles were a lot better using this technique rather than the X or the heart. By the way, I'd love to see images created using this technique, so just tag me on Instagram at Bayouli & Zandvo. Now, after trying a singular letter, the next step was obviously trying a whole word. And here I came to face quite a challenge, as the letters became way too small for me to cut out by hand. That's why I decided to use my 3D printer to make these. And I have to say, they turned out beautifully. So, yes, you can make in-camera writing. Other than that, I hope that you enjoyed this video and maybe found something interesting or inspiring. If you have any questions, be sure to ask them in the comments. And if you want to see more of these videos, subscribe. Until then, see you next video.