Photo Technique

Photographic Experiments with Roses

Published: Sat, Jun 01, 2019
Written by GizellaN
2 Comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Double Glass, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photo Technique, Photography, Sol 45, Velvet 56
Tags: flower, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photography, rose

Welcome to my June 1 Lensbaby Blog Circle post! For this post I used the dried up roses my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day. My goal was to experiment with them and see what I could create. I set a few limitations for myself:

  1. I would only use Lensbaby lenses (since I was shooting for this post)
  2. I would only use natural light and some light modifiers – light reflectors, light softeners and flags (these add shadow)
  3. I would take all the photos from a tripod

Here is my setup, showing my wonderful assistant, Destiny as well:

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Perfect Imperfection – Something I Can Achieve with my Lensbaby Lenses

Published: Thu, May 16, 2019
Written by GizellaN
No comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Inspirational, Lensbaby, Photo Technique, Photography, Sol 45, Sweet 50 or 35, Velvet 56
Tags: Lensbaby

Whenever I talk to people about my current photography I tell them that Lensbaby lenses are perfect for me. The funny part is that many Lensbaby images are far from perfect if you are looking at them with your technical eyes only. I could even say that Lensbaby pictures are perfectly imperfect. What do I mean by this? Let me show you some of my creations and explain how the imperfection led me to create something that I felt stood out from the crowd.

Let’s start with this image, which I took with the Sweet 50 (my very first LB lens). Technically this image is not successful. I clearly wasn’t able to focus fast enough on any of the birds. Despite this, I really like the outcome. Thanks to the special effects created by the lens, I feel the movement of the birds, and I can almost hear the noise gulls make when a large flock of them fly away all at once.

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Strawberries Up Close

Published: Thu, Apr 25, 2019
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Double Glass, Food photography, Lensbaby, Photo Technique, Photography, Single Glass, Sol 45, Twist 60, Velvet 56
Tags: food photography, Lens comparison, Lensbaby, strawberry

I was supposed to post this yesterday (to keep up with my daily posts), but it was a very busy day for me. I’ll tell you about that in a different post later.

I chose this project for three different reasons. One is that I have been learning a tiny bit about food photography, and I wanted to try out some of what I had learned. Secondly, I haven’t done a comparison between lenses experiment for a while, and I want to find the best lens(es) for what I want to start now – which would be the third reason for the project. But I’d like to share that with you at another time.

This is what I tried yesterday:

I set up a plate of yummy strawberries on my dining room table, since I get the most natural light there. I used two white reflectors to bounce some of the light back on the fruit. I then used the following lenses with or without macro attachments and at various apertures: Nikon 50mm, Lensbaby Velvet 56, Single Glass, Double Glass, Twist 60 and Sol 45. I am going to show you the images that I liked the most – for different reasons. Some, because they somewhat resembled an image I would see in a magazine (with more props or better composition perhaps), others because of their very unusual looks and feelings. I’d be happy to know which images you appreciate the most.

  1. Nikon 50mm with 12mm macro extension tube

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Lensbaby Burnside 35 Testing – How Can I Create a Swirling Effect in my Images?

Published: Wed, Mar 27, 2019
Written by GizellaN
4 Comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Photo Technique, Photography
Tags: Burnside, experimenting, flowers, Lensbaby, Swirling, testing

Since last summer one of my favorite Lensbaby lenses is the Burnside 35. I found many ways of using it, and I also know what subjects it doesn’t work with – at least for me. One of the features I really like in this lens is the swirling effect that happens when I use it at a wide open aperture of F2.8. But the aperture setting is not enough for the swirling to happen, so I set out to find out what else I need for the effect to show up in my images. In my experiment I had some success, but I also found it to be somewhat flawed.

I purchased a large bouquet of sunflowers, because they looked amazing. After about an hour of arranging them in a vase, filled with beans for stability and precise placement of the stems, I had a background ready for the test pictures. I needed the flowers to spread out as much as possible in the two dimensional picture, and this took some trial and error to achieve with the three dimensional objects. I created the photographs in my dining area, where there was plenty of natural light coming in through the windows. The only light modifier I used was a large piece of foam board from Home Depot with one side covered in a silver layer. This helped with brightening the shadows on the right side of the bouquet.

I started out with photographing the bouquet with various apertures. Since these are just test shots, I did not worry much about the sides not being perfect and some stuff showing from behind the black screen.

No Subject-Darkest Aperture-No Vignette

No Subject-Darkest Aperture-Max Vignette

No Subject-Brightest Aperture-No Vignette

No Subject-Brightest Aperture-Max Vignette
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Lensbaby Session with a Pink Dahlia

Published: Wed, Oct 31, 2018
Written by GizellaN
6 Comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Double Glass, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Photo Technique, Photography, Pinhole, Single Glass, Sol 45, Sweet 50 or 35, Velvet 56
Tags: Dahlia, flower, Lensbaby, Photography

I have once again added a few more pieces to my Lensbaby lens collection; this time I found a set of three optics that fit into my Composer Pro base. I also found a beautiful pink Dahlia plant at the local nursery where I learn about gardening tips and tricks on most Saturdays.

I was wondering how differently I could capture the same flower with all my Lensbaby lenses and optics. So I emerged in a photo session with the Dahlia for a good two hours. I used  two additional accessories for all images: a +10 macro filter or a +10 macro filter combined with a 36mm macro tube.

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