I had very good intentions to get out and shoot today but when I got home from my morning meeting it was so windy I didn’t think I could find anything standing still. So, I opted for this one from my walk on the Greenway with the Edge 35 the other day. I just cropped it a little and edited out a distracting element in the lower left corner.
Here’s another one from my camera walk with the edge 35 yesterday. There is a spot along the greenway where a tree was cut down about six months ago and they just left the log pieces there to rot. I was thinking it might be fun to photograph a leaf on one of the stumps and even picked one up and played with it but felt kind of guilty for staging the shot. Then I looked over on the other side of the path and here were these two leaves right where nature put them.
The stump was kind of washed out so I added a vignette to darken the edges. It was still pretty pale and boring so I added a brown texture that gave me just the effect I was looking for.
This is another one from yesterday’s walk on the Greenway. Actually it was captured before I ever left the neighborhood. It was carefully composed so the white bark showed through and the street behind did not. This again was taken with the Sol45 on the M3. I did a little inventory yesterday and found that the Sweet50 is way over represented at 27 out of 65 images posted, the Trio is next at 11, the Sol 45 with 7 and the Velvets split at 6 each. All of which means I’ll be working with the edge 35 and the Burnside next week.
So, in post processing, adding clarity was the main thing, then I added a slight vignette to make the main leaf stand out more.
So, today, I decided it was time to mix it up a little and took the Sol45 for a walk on the Greenway. I was just getting interested in the acorns when my battery started flashing red. I forgot to bring a spare but I did remember to put extension tubes in my pocket. It was a little dark under the canopy where I found these but so many of the ones in the light were over my head. I worked on the exposure, added a high pas filter, and added two textures.
I took another camera walk in Medford today, still working with the Velvet 56 mounted on the EOS R, but the light was flat and nothing really inspired me so as I was walking past the antique mall I thought, “Oh, why not.” I got a few strange looks but no one threw me out. Did I mention that I paid $50 extra to get the silver version of the Velvet 56? It is quite the attention getter… I have gotten more comments on that lens! I’m starting to think black might have been a better choice. But, getting back to the antique mall, I was especially taken with some Pollyanna style lamps with hanging crystals. I added a high pass filter and brightened things up a bit. And, since yesterday was new texture day at the texture club I chose a subtle grunge texture that added just what this image needed.
I’m still putting the Velvet 56 through it’s paces so today I took it to growers market. I was just leaving the market when I spotted some thistles blooming. I went over and darned if there weren’t bees buzzing around. I probably could have gotten a little closer from a technical standpoint but I was a little worried about ticking the bees off. So this is a situation where the Velvet 85 might have been the better tool for the job as I really don’t like that dead thistle at the bottom. I cropped in quite a bit as it was. I suppose I could have gone a little further. One advantage to the R camera is it has a lot of pixels to play with. In any case I did brighten it a bit and added a high pass filter for detail. I also added a texture for just a slight painterly look on all that gorgeous blur in the background.
Here’s another one from my camera walk with the Velvet 56 yesterday. I had to brighten the exposure on this one due to the white flower tricking the camera into thinking it was grey. I also added a high pass filter to bring out the raindrops. And I added one texture but masked it out over the flower. Textures and the Velvet lenses really do play well together.
I took the Velvet 56 out for a spin around the neighborhood this morning, mounted on the EOS R. Match made in heaven I think. The combo is light enough to easily hand hold and both the camera and the lens are sharp where they need to be. And the Velvet 56 lives up to all my hopes and expectations as a macro lens. I love, love, love, the super soft background the velvet produces and I was hesitant to mess it up with a texture but in the end I thought the texture added just enough interest to make it a keeper.
I may have mentioned awhile back that I would be getting a new Lensbaby lens for my birthday. What with travel and jet lag and trying to catch up from being gone it has taken three weeks to get the new Velvet 56 into my hands. With a minimum focus distance of 5″ this lens has the most macro capability of any of my Lensbabies. I’m currently taking an online class in color so I set out to kill three birds with one stone by completing my color homework, testing the new lens and getting something done for the 100 days project. I’m not sure I succeeded, at least from the color standpoint. To my eye the burgundy cloth and the burgundy hydrangeas were about the same tone. But the camera wanted the flowers to be pink and the cloth red. So, I adjusted the color toward blue and added two bluish toned filters to try to bring it back to what I was seeing in the studio. I used the little bucket and a tin ceiling tile for neutral tones to play against my color. One thing I have noticed so far is that while the velvet 56 can stop down to f1.6, I haven’t been able to get anything in focus at that aperture…it may work better in full macro modes, we’ll see. In any case I look forward to playing with my new toy some more in the days ahead.
I’m getting into a nice rhythm of shooting a day ahead which takes some of the stress off. I found these apples at the Grower’s market yesterday. I was touring the marked with the Sol45 mounted on the M3. In post I added some clarity and vibrance and a light room preset which helped to brighten the image. Then I added a texture which I felt mainly gave a richness to the colors as well as a little hint of an edge.