Pronouncing "Bokeh"

Bokeh is a modern word to describe the background blur of a photo like in the photo below. The rusty iron is in focus but the sea behind is not.



A common question is which lenses have the "best" bokeh, but that does not interest me very much. It is like asking which colour is best, red or green? Or which is best, food or drink? Sometimes you need one and sometimes the other. Sometimes a lot of blur is needed. Sometimes it just looks artificial.

However, what I think is interesting is the pronunciation and origin of the word.

It is generally agreed that it comes from Japanese ボケ (boke), which is a technical photo term with the same meaning as in English. The Japanese word is an abbreviated form of the verb 暈ける (bokeru), which means "fade" or "appear blurry". It may be worth noting that Japanese classical art, like the 狩野派 (kanōha) or Kanō school, works a lot with detailed foregrounds and non-intrusive or even empty backgrounds. However, the expression ボケ is usually not used in this context, but only when it comes to photography.

The word has only been used since the late 1990s in English, so no widely accepted pronunciation has yet evolved.

If you want to use the Japanese pronunciation, it is /bɒkɛ/, with "bo" of "Bob" and "ke" in Kenneth. However, in English, it does not sound very natural to end a word with a short ɛ. Besides a vowel before a syllable starting with a single k in English is usually long, so the "bo" bit does not seem natural either. It therefore seems perfectly acceptable to pronounce it exactly like "bouquet" in English.

If someone laughs at your pronunciation, you can be confident that other people laugh at their pronunciation as well.

And now for a warning. If you think that you learnt a Japanese word today, you need to make sure the context is right, when you use it. Even though 暈ける (bokeru) means fade, the word 惚ける with exactly the same pronunciation means "to become senile".　呆け or 惚け, both pronounced /bɒkɛ/ mean senility. Another meaning of the same pronunciation is the plant 木瓜, Japanese Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles speciosa). In other words, when you use it, make sure the context shows which boke/bokeru you are talking about.

Deleting photos from your iPad

Deleting a large number of photos on your iPad may not be obvious. There are a few solutions.

Deleting Several Imported iPad Photos using a Mac

The most convenient way to delete a large number of photos is probably to use your Mac. (It is probably possible to use some similar method on the PC, but I do not know which application to use.)

1. Connect your iPad.
2. Open Preview on your Mac (Image Capture would also work with a slightly different scenario).
3. Go to the menu item File > Import from (the name of your iPad)...
4. Select the pictures you want to delete.
5. Click on the red delete icon at the bottom of the screen.

To better select the photos you want to delete, you can use the two icons in the bottom left corner.

In the icon view you can get reasonably large previews of the photos.


In the list view, you can sort the images according to a large number of criteria. You can also move the columns around, so you see the information that interests you.


To select several pictures, you can use the standard multi-select shortcuts: Click and shift-click on another photo to select all photos in between. Command-click to toggle selection of an individual photo without affecting which other photos are selected. Command-A to select all photos on the iPad (in all folders!).

Deleting Several Imported iPad Photos on the iPad

You can also delete several photos at the same time on the iPad itself, but it is not that elegant. If you have a large number of photos in the same folder, it is not easy to select them all, and if you have photos in several folders, you often have to delete them folder by folder.

1. Locate a view with the photos you want to delete.
2. Click on the Export (!) icon with the arrow in a square in the upper right corner.
3. Do not click on the tempting red Delete button, but click once on each of the pictures you want to delete. You can also drag with two (!) fingers over the photos you want to select. (In the first version of the Photo app, you used one photo, but Apple thought that was too easy.)
4. Click on the Delete button.

Synched photos

Photos you have synched with iTunes, you can remove in iTunes, by simply not synching them any more. It seems impossible to delete them from the iPad itself in iOS3.

1. Connect the iPad.
2. In iTunes, click on the iPad icon.
3. Click on the tab Photos.
4. In Projects and Albums, unselect the folder you sync.