Photography

Greeting Spring with Lensbaby Velvet 56

Published: Sat, Mar 31, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Velvet 56
Tags: flower, Lensbaby, Photography, Velvet 56
During my daughter’s Spring Break we visited my in-laws in Colorado. I was very excited about taking pictures of spring flowers; it used to be my long awaited activity after the long winter when we still lived there.
I got a bit disappointed, because there were barely any flowers blooming. What do you do when yo really want to take pictures of spring flowers but they are not in bloom yet? You buy two potted tulips at the store and gift them to you mother-in-law and her neighbor. But first, you take a few pictures of them. 🙂
The following images were all created with a Velvet 56 lens, and post-processed in Photoshop using Topaz and On1 plugins. Enjoy!
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Getting Up Close and Personal – with Flowers

Published: Sat, Mar 17, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Velvet 56
Tags: flower, Lensbaby, macro, Photography, Velvet 56
Flowers are amazing, beautiful, and I adore them. I also love to get close to them with my camera and create images that show how I feel about them.
I have a new “toy” that allows me to do this more than anything else: a Lensbaby Velvet 56 lens. This lens has become my favorite after using it just for a few hours. I’ve always wanted to create dreamy, painterly looking floral images, and this lens helps me do that.
Since it has macro abilities, you can get as close as 5cm to your subject. And at that distance you’ll find all kinds of miracles. You can, for example separate one tiny, budding Geranium bloom from all the others and see it like this:

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Disconnected and Disappearing (El Toro Airbase Thematic)

Published: Tue, Feb 27, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Photo Events, Photography, Photoshop, USA
Tags: El Toro Airbase, Photography

Picture

The End of an Era
In April, May and June of 2013, as well as in June of 2014 I attended a few photographic workshops lead by members of The Legacy Project. During these days the participants were taken back to shut down runways and hangars of the former El Toro Airbase, which were closed to the public.
Why did I attend these workshops? It wasn’t a military background. I very much enjoy taking pictures of architecture, and the older the building it is, the more interesting it becomes to me. Portraying former beauty or function in decaying buildings and places is another favorite photographic topic for me. When I heard about the first workshop and how close to our home it was going to be, I signed up right away. I am very glad I did. This was a very interesting and eerie location to visit and to photograph.
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Practicing with the Lensbaby Sweet 50

Published: Sat, Feb 10, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Photography, Sweet 50 or 35
Tags: flower, Lensbaby, Photography, Sweet 50
I’m ready to play! After years and years of chasing tack sharp images, I’m looking forward to trying something else. I am on an adventure to find out what magical things I can create with the Lensbaby lenses.
I first heard about these lenses six-eight years ago from my father-in-law, but at that time I didn’t look into them. Then last Fall I watched two of Kathleen Clemons’ CreativeLive.com classes about flower photography*, and she also mentioned how much she loved these lenses. So here I am, owning and learning my first system – the Composer Pro II with the Sweet 50 optic.

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My Photo Challenges in 2018

Published: Sat, Feb 03, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Photography
Tags: Photography
This year I am participating both in a 365-day and a 52-week photo challenge. For the first one I post an image (old or new) every day on Instagram. For the latter one I need to take or create an image a week on a certain topic. This week our topic was “Symmetry”. I kind of ran out of time to go on a photoshoot, so I ended up creating my image. 
A few days ago I found a piece of wood that had fallen off of a palm tree. I picked it up and took it home. Sometimes I do stuff like that… When I looked at the piece it sparked my imagination; I saw it being the wing of a butterfly. 
First, I took a picture of it on a grey piece of cloth, just using my iPhone. The rest of the steps were done in Photoshop.

As a first step I cut out the wood from the background, then reflected it to create a butterfly shape. I’ve added a background and some textures, as well as a butterfly shaped stamp. This layer also received some textures.
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Then I experimented with blend modes and different lighting effects. Finally I added a color effect and contrast, and ended up with this final image:
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The goal of this creation was not to come up with a super realistic image, rather the symmetry was my main purpose. Therefore, I left shadows in the picture that clearly give away that this is not a real moth.
This was such a fun exercise!