I was very exited to use my new lens with the 1.4 aperture. I was practicing with the lower apertures, so this photo is at 2.0. I certainly could have worked on getting a little more focus on the petals. Thanks for the input everyone!

Erv, yes please post your photos. That would be great. I really love to have a little bokeh in my photos, particularly because I like to take portraits. My issue has been, I don't know how to control it. I love the idea of taking the pictures with different apertures to get the bokeh under control. With this image, I find it distracting.

It was a Canon T1i with a 50mm/1.4. There was no zoom. I took about 20 pictures in this set and many of them had these effect - some of them linear, others more circular like this one. I can post more.

Why did the bokeh go crazy? How did I do this, and how can I control it? (no cropping or PP on this photo)

I took this picture with my 50mm/1.4 lens as soon as I pulled it out of the box last summer. There is no PP. I think it's an OK picture, I'm not in love with the oversaturated petals. I was interested in opinions/critiques. I don't have any emotional attachment to the image, so fire away! :)

Thanks everyone! I still have a ton to learn - these are my best 3 shots. I have hundreds of terrible ones. :) My poor daughter is my guinea pig, and yes, the bored look is more of a "seriously mom, put the camera down" look.

I recently stubbled across this site and I'm excited by the positive, helpful comments on the photos. I am working hard on learning everything I can about my camera and photography in general. I started using a DSLR in 2007 when my daughter was born, but just this year I started shooting out of automatic mode. I love taking pictures of my kids & my friend's kids.