Need Help De-focusing My Pictures

[AdAstra09]

I was recently drifting through flickr and I found this amazing photstream that I really liked where most of the pictures were soft focused and blurry:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/an_vie/
I really like how this effect conveys mood and atmosphere (plus she's an amazing photographer) and I was wondering if this is something you can do in-camera or do you have to do it post-production. If you can do it in camera, what do I adjust? I'd appreciate any help with this. Thanks in advance!

[private]

Without looking at the pic that is called bokeh and can be achieved by changing your aperture to a low number. What type of camera do you have?

Also it could be a Gaussian blur.

[OsmosisStudios]

Most of those are Gaussian blur, though some might be enhanced by some DoF blur too.

If you have photoshop: Filter > blur > gaussian blur. Adjust.

You can set a selection any way you want. For this kind of thing I prefer the quickmask mode.
Very last bottom of your TOOLS palette, paintbrush with a 0% hardness, paint selection, exit quickmask, apply blur.

[AdAstra09]

So its mostly post processing then? Not in camera stuff?

[OsmosisStudios]

Pretty much all post-processing, yeah.

[AdAstra09]

Thanks for answering. I'm glad I didn't spend another two hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong

[wulf]

I think that most or perhaps all of the images have had some degree of post-production work. However, the photographer is also working very confidently with lighting. Some of that you need to capture in-camera if you want to reach similar results.

I would suggest trying to find a window and a time of day when light comes streaming through it to take your photos.

Wulf

ps. shifted to another section, since this isn't really focused on compositional techniques.