The pictures in this post were taken during the summer when I was visiting my family in Hungary. This was the second time I visited the “Fűvészkert”, an arboretum in Budapest. It’s a wonderful place for plant and flower lovers, with or without a camera. I spent a few hours walking around and capturing flowers with three of my Lensbaby lenses: the Twist 60, the Sol 45 and the Velvet 56. I hope you’ll enjoy the photos of the flora of the arboretum as much as I enjoyed seeing them in live.
Velvet 56
Welcome to my August 1st Lensbaby Blog Circle post, which is a brief insight into the first few days of our annual family visit to Hungary.
My daughter and I arrived after midnight last Thursday, after a long, 26 hour trip (due to flight problems). Late morning on Friday we immediately headed to my brother’s weekend home by Lake Balaton. I took some pictures in his very nicely kept yard (his son was a great helper), at the lake in the morning, and some flowers during my walk. On Saturday we visited an adventure park near the city of Veszprém, where the cousins had a ton of fun playing together in a pond. We also visited another adventure park in Budapest on Tuesday. The following pictures were all taken with Lensbaby lenses, mostly with the Twist 60 and the Double glass. I hope you’ll enjoy a bit of European photography from me.
(Double glass)
In the past few weeks I haven’t used my Lensbaby lenses as much, because I attended nature programs in groups, where an automatic lens was more useful. If I wanted to take pictures while hiking, I had to do it fast and not hold up the group.
Last week I spent a brief time at a pretty place in San Clemente, California. Casa Romantica is a beautiful venue for weddings and parties, and it is open to the public when no events are going on.
I walked around the garden three times, using a different lens each time while approaching the same subjects. I used the Sol 45, the Twist 60 and the Velvet 56. After comparing the images I chose the ones to post that I liked the most. One subject worked very well with all three lenses, I’ll save that for last. A few subjects didn’t work for me at all. So here are the winners:
The only image of the view from the gardens I liked was taken with the Twist 60. It was a dark, overcast day, but this is the lens I would use again for this view on a sunny day.
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:
- I would only use Lensbaby lenses (since I was shooting for this post)
- I would only use natural light and some light modifiers – light reflectors, light softeners and flags (these add shadow)
- I would take all the photos from a tripod
Here is my setup, showing my wonderful assistant, Destiny as well:
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.
