Category: Lensbaby

Day 2 – Sunflower

Sunflower

Today I chose the Velvet85 for my camera walk and headed out to the Talent Pollinator garden, which is small but usually has something in bloom. I wasn’t too thrilled with my results and decided to walk around the block to where I had seen sunflowers in someone’s front yard. Right next to the Pollinator garden is a vacant lot and imagine my surprise and delight to find it filled with wild sunflowers.

The Velvet 85 and it’s sister lens, the Velvet 56 are designed to have a slightly soft velvety look with a hint of glow around the edges. With a minimum focusing distance of 9.5″ the short telephoto Velvet 85 can hold it’s own in macro situations and is well loved by portrait and wedding photographers. At 1.2lbs the Velvet 85 is a challenge to hand hold. Did I mention that all the Lensbaby lenses are manual focus? But with a maximum aperture of 1.8 you can get some pretty fast shutter speeds even at 100 ISO. I had the lens mounted on my EOS R which is the only full frame camera I own so maybe not the best choice for flowers as the crop sensors on my other cameras would maximize the telephoto effect for macro shooting.

In post processing I started by opening the shadows and added clarity, vibrance and saturation in Lightroom. Then I took it in to photoshop and did some color balance adjustment as being in shadow was making it appear too blue to me. Next I added a preset from 2 Lil Owls which helped to bring it out of the shadows a little more. Finally I added a texture which gives it a little bit of an old timey look.

 

100 Days of Lensbaby

WhiteonLavender2

Yes, I should probably have my head examined. Maybe I’m just a masochist. But I had a brilliant idea for a new 100 days project and I couldn’t come up with any good excuses not to run with it. So, starting today and (if I did the math right) continuing through November 9, I will post one new image a day to this blog. The image must be captured with a Lensbaby lens, it does not have to be captured on that day but must be captured within the 100 day period.

Lensbaby, for the uninitiated, is a company based in our own Portland, Oregon which manufactures special effects lenses for photography. In a world that loves sharp focus, Lensbaby goes for maximum blur, distorted backgrounds and soft velvety looks. I currently own 5 Lensbaby lenses, I’ll tell you all about them as I get into the project. I’ve already picked out a sixth lens for my birthday present but that is over a month away. I have a feeling a couple more may come home to roost during the course of the project. Thanks Mom.

If you can’t wait to learn more about Lensbaby , here is a link to a blog post by a photographer I follow which may give more insight into the options available and includes photos showing the results she has gotten.

https://lensbaby.com/lensbaby-magic-flower-photography-jamie-davidson/

Today’s image was captured using the Trio 28 mounted on my new Canon M100 which I bought as a light weight walking around camera. The Trio 28 is unique in a couple of respects. First it is designed to be used with Mirrorless cameras so does not require an adaptor thus playing into my lightweight strategy. The Trio is so named because it offers three distinct Lensbaby effects. With a simple rotation of the front of the lens you can select Twist, which offers a swirly background; Velvet which offers a smooth glowing effect; or Sweet, which offers an area of sweet sharp focus that then fades off in blur. For this image I had the camera set on Velvet (I’m pretty sure). One of my issues with the Trio is it is not always obvious to me where I had the lens set. I’m trying to be more consistent about the order in which I shoot but in the case of this butterfly, it was such a game of chase I wasn’t paying too much attention. The other issue I have with the Trio is it is wide angle at 28mm which is not my favorite mode to work in. The Trio also has a fixed aperture at 3.5 so shallow depth of field is a given.

In any case, when I got this image into the computer, I decided to give it a vertical crop. I tried taking it into Topaz Studio2 for a more painterly look but didn’t see anything I liked. Then I remembered it was new texture day at the 2 Lil Owls texture club so I downloaded this month’s textures and tried one of the new ones which gave me the look I finally settled on.

I’ll try not to be so verbose in future posts but I wanted to be sure and give you some background on the project and I want to introduce each lens as I use it for the first time.

Hydrangea

Hydrangea2

My Hydrangea is blooming in full glory again. This year it is more blue than purple, probably because I forgot to feed it this spring. Either way it takes my breath away. This was taken with the Lensbaby Velvet 85 lens on the new Mirroless Canon EOS R. I cropped it to a vertical and added a texture, some sharpening and a slight vignette. Oh, yes, and happy Nature Photography Day!

Japanese Maple

Maple_leaves

I’m running late again with the image of the week.  I was also late in getting to the Japanese Garden in Lithia Park this year. but I still found some pretty leaves. this one was taken with the Lensbaby Sweet 50 lens. I’m gearing up to put together a show at my newly expanded gallery space at Ashland Artisan’s Emporium which will feature images from the Japanese Garden before its impending refurbishment.

Day 96 – Bouquet Flower

BoquetFlower

Well, I guess this is some kind of daisy but I just bought the bouquet at Fred Meyer this morning because I thought it was pretty and I needed something to photograph for today. Yes, I am kind of going through the motions at this point but at least I have gotten to this point without quitting. I just brought the vase with the bouquet upstairs to the tiny studio and picked up the M3 which had the Sol 45 Lensbaby attached and started shooting. Tweaked the exposure, added a high pass filter for sharpening and that’s it.

Day 95 – Morning Glory

MorningGlory

Monday’s I teach my OLLI class and by the end of it I am totally exhausted. About three times today I thought “Oh, yeah, I need to do a flower.” But it wasn’t until I was relaxing with a glass of wine and Dancing with the Stars that I realized that I never did it. So combing through the archives again. I found this Morning Glory from North Mountain Park. I intentionally shot it with the sunflowers in the background to add that pop of yellow color. I wish the black fence wasn’t there but I guess it is to keep the deer out. And today was new texture day in the texture club so I had to try one of the new ones here.