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:

Sometimes I used the inside of a round reflector as a light filter. (I like this kind because it has handles.)

This was a purely experimental photo shoot, which led me to an interesting ending. I will share with you quite a few images, and let you know ahead of time that many did not get my esthetic approval. But through them I can show you how I progressed through the shoot.

This was the first image I took (Burnside 35).

Right away I saw that I didn’t like the leaves, because they were too light and stole the focus of the image. I cut them off.

I liked this better, but I was still looking for something more. I found it, when I turned the rose around and saw the beautiful color and shape of the sepals.

I switched the Burnside out to the Velvet 56. Started out with a wider aperture, but I liked the image more as a made the aperture narrower. The third one was about at F5.6.

I switched the rose out for another one from the bouquet. I liked the dynamics in this image.

Since I was experimenting, I placed two items in front of the lens: first a bubble wrap, then a plastic bag. I didn’t care for either look, so I moved on.

I grabbed a new rose, and tried 2 different apertures of the Velvet on this one. I liked the latter one better.

On the next rose I liked how the highlights fell on that middle sepal.

This next one looked very promising on the viewfinder monitor on my camera, but I didn’t like it as much on the bigh screen.

The next one, taken with the Sol45 was the first one that stopped me during browsing. I loved how well the sepals contrasted with the rose petals and the background.

I added textures to this one; I feel that it added some moodiness to the image.

The following images were all taken with the Sol 45.

These three show how using light modifiers can change the look. I kept the white reflector board on the right side for all the pictures. But on the left, I sometimes didn’t use anything (1st image), sometimes I used something to shade the subject (2nd image), or filtered the light (3rd image).

I’ve mentioned that there was a surprise ending. After focusing only on the sepals of individual flowers, for the last shot I placed all the roses back in the vase. I also switched out the lens and used the Double Glass at F4. When I saw the image on my computer, I immediately picked this one as the “winner of the shoot”. It might not be for you, but when I saw it, it instantly reminded me of the rose bouquet I held exactly 17 years ago today at my wedding.

I was very happy with this experimental shoot. It forced me to try different lenses, change some light conditions, and I’m glad that I even changed using one stem to the whole bouquet.

This post is part of a group of posts about Lensbaby related topics. At the beginning of each month we feature images and stories taken with our Lensbaby lenses, and link to each other. Next up in the blog circle is Seonaid Teal, please click this link to see her post and keep following the circle!

*Disclaimer: As an Amazon affiliate I get commissions for purchases made through Amazon links in this post.