The resulting image produces that slight uncomfortable and guilty feeling of being busted. Note however that if the subject suddenly looks through the foreground at you, making eye contact – the fourth wall is broken and the audience has suddenly become noticed.

On the other hand, if you are looking through or around or over something, then you are definitely a third party observer: you are outside the action, and have made the thrill of discovery or voyeurism – or simply observing the scene play out unnoticed. If you look at something without any noticeable or significant foreground between yourself and subject, then it’s safe to interpret that you are a participant or direct first-party observer. Out of focus foreground extending around the edge of the frame or most of it can suggest a journey or portal that the audience has to pass through to reach the subject it adds a layer of distance between observer and observed. If it’s in focus and attracts our attention, we assume it’s meant to be the subject – even if it isn’t, and merely a frame or context for it. If something comes before or outside, we take it as being there first. Out of focus foregrounds not only allow you to hint at something being there without having to explicitly state it and take attention away from your subject, but also establish an order of causality to the narrative. For that matter, few outside cinematography actively seek to use out of focus foregrounds as part of the underlying structure of their compositions. However, few outside cinematographic circles talks much about the way the foregrounds render. too much bokeh might be pretty but completely negates any sort of context other than what mood can be inferred by the feel of the light and some bokeh is always preferable to none because it helps with subject isolation. I think we can generally agree on a few things – ‘good’ bokeh doesn’t distract from the subject with uneven or sharp luminance transitions, double images, harsh rendering, rings or irregular textures in the ‘highlight balls’, patterns, bright edges, coloured fringing etc. Whilst much emphasis is placed on the way a lens renders out of focus areas – the oft-overused ‘ bokeh‘ – it’s almost always used to describe the areas that fall behind the focal plane.

Bokeh definition in photography