In the spring of 2018 I was extremely happy to find out that I was one of the chosen Traveling Burnside Project participants. I was given a Lensbaby Burnside 35 lens to take pictures with partially in the United States, and then in Hungary as well.
I took all my Lensbaby lenses on my trip to Europe, and one zoom lens. Surprisingly, I left the Burnside on my camera for most of the time, and not just because of the project. I liked how light my gear was, I liked looking for the right subjects for the lens, and I started becoming more efficient with manual focusing as well. I found that certain topics didn’t work for me with this lens, but many others did. Obviously, the same can be said about any lens. I loved finding subjects where I could utilize the swirly effect.
I have been writing about my experience with the lens (all posts here), but as the end of the project approached I felt I should give my final thoughts about it.
First, I want to tell you where I felt I was most successful with the lens. I absolutely loved certain floral images the lens created. Utilizing the wide open aperture and the highest vignette setting I’ve created flower images that really wowed me. Some of the following pictures were created strictly with the Burnside, for others I used a +4 or +10 macro filter. My post-process tools were Lightroom, On1 Effects, and rarely Photoshop.