Yesterday I was able to meet another Southern California Lensbaby photographer, Rita. She lives about an hour north of LA, and I am the same distance south of it. We decided to meet half way in between, at the LA County Arboretum.

I was very excited about driving there because of the overcast. It is so much easier to take nice floral photographs on cloudy days. Unfortunately, as soon as we entered the arboretum, the sky cleared up. Although it wasn’t what I wished for, we had a beautiful, sunny day to walk around for a few hours.

There weren’t a lot of plants blooming, but the place was still very beautiful.

Read More

To my delight, I was able to join a group of wonderful Lensbaby photographers from around the world, and take part in their monthly Lensbaby Blog Circle. At the beginning of the month we all feature images in a post created with various Lensbaby lenses on diverse topics. To visit all the blog posts you just need to sit back, enjoy a post, then click on the link posted at the end of the post to hop over to the next one. I’m very excited to be part of this group.
For my first Blog Circle post I am featuring images from Laguna Beach, California. I have just received my new Lensbaby lens, the Sol 45. I had seen a lot of wonderful images taken with this lens in our Facebook group and on Instagram, and I was very eager to try out myself. On the first day I had it, I created some macro flower images in my backyard. They turned out delightful. But I wanted to see what kind of pictures I can create in a non-macro environment. I decided to go on a beach hopping tour – visit my most favorite beaches in the town of Laguna Beach and just shoot, shoot, and shoot.

Read More

Last Sunday we made a family trip to Venice Beach, CA. It was 5 years ago when we were there last time; it was during my brother’s visit from Hungary.
This place was a very interesting, eclectic place back then too, but it felt even more unusual to me now. Lots of buildings were boarded up, restaurants/street food stands were closed, and the homeless population has boomed since the last time we were there.
Since this was a family walk, I shot pictures with my Burnside 35 lens. I find this lens useful when I am not on my own shooting schedule, and I only have short times to stop and focus on something before I take the picture.

Read More
After dropping off my daughter at school (she has just started as a Freshman), I headed down to the ocean with my camera to take a walk in one of my favorite beach cities, Laguna Beach.
It was pretty early and the city was not as crowded as I experience it most of the time. I grabbed my Lensbaby Burnside 35 for this short walk, and except for the last image, I kept it on my camera.
I couldn’t walk by this beautiful Lily without snapping a picture of it. Then I headed down to the beach.
Read More
Smile! You are on camera.
Yesterday I made a visit to the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. It was another hot (89F) and sunny day, not the most ideal day for photography, but I still had a ton of fun. I took all four of my Lensbaby lenses and I ended up using three of them. I started out with the Burnside 35, switched over to the Velvet 56, and finally used the Sweet 35. Let me take you on a pictorial walk of the arboretum and also give you some of my thoughts about the lenses.
There are lots of different birds at the Arboretum, but what it is most famous for are the peacocks. There are over 200 peafowls leaving on the premises currently. These two were my favorite photographs of them from yesterday, and I prefer the Burnside photo over the Sweet 35.
Read More