Inspired by Now

Published: Sun, Aug 05, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Lensbaby, Photography

My hubby and I spent about an hour at a nearby park playing frisbee golf. I don’t go anywhere without my camera, and this morning wasn’t an exception either. I took the Burnside 35 lens, because I am still practicing people photography with it. My husband is usually a willing model.

Just in case you don’t know this game: it basically follows the rules of golf, but you play it with specialty frisbee disks that fly far away. The holes are metal baskets.

Some courses are in mixed used parks, like the one we went to yesterday, others have dedicated fields.
I approached the game with my camera from a few different point of views.
First I only photographed the player as he was throwing the disc. I didn’t like these too much because you couldn’t tell that the person was playing frisbee golf and not just throwing a frisbee. Then I started incorporating the basket as well to give my images a story.

Here is my favorite one: it shows what game is being played, and the frisbee disc is in motion and well visible. This picture tells a story.

Since the park has some old, tall trees, I took a few pictures of a few from different distances. To end my short post I’m going to show the tree images to you.

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Published: Wed, Aug 01, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Hungary, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photography, Recommendations, USA

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.

Published: Tue, Jul 24, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Hungary, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photography

Cemeteries in Europe are different from the ones I’ve seen in the USA. In Hungary, many people regularly visit their passed relatives in the nearby cemetery and take care of their graves. Not everyone, of course.
I thought that using the Burnside in the local cemetery could work really well. Yesterday I took off to make the visit there, but I had to turn back from the first bus stop due to the dark clouds and the thunder. We ended up with over 4 hours of rain and heavy storms, so the photo trip didn’t happen. But today was a better day and I made it to the cemetery.
First, I visited my grandparents’ graves, then walked around for an hour and kept looking for the right subjects for the Lensbaby Burnside 35 lens. I think I was able to find very interesting ones.

Published: Sun, Jul 22, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photo Technique, Photography, Sweet 50 or 35, Velvet 56

About a week ago a friend of mine asked me if I could demonstrate the different looks various lenses can create of the same subject – including the Burnside. I picked a rose in my brother’s garden for my subject, and used four different lenses: Nikon 35mm, Lensbaby Burnside 35, LB Velvet 56, and LB Sweet 35. Please don’t expect this post to be a complete test of the 4 lenses; my goal was to give a good indication about the various looks you can achieve. I haven’t done any post processing on the following images. I will show a few images from each of the four lenses, then later in the post I’l put them next to each other for an easier comparison.

First, I’d like to show you three images I took with the Nikon 35mm lens, which is an automatic focus, prime lens. I got as close to the subject as I could, which was about 10″ (click to enlarge).

Published: Tue, Jul 17, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photography

After trying out the Burnside on the gorgeous architecture of Budapest, I’d like to post again about my favorite subject: flower photography.

One day last week I walked around in my dad’s garden and found some very pretty flowers. I added a macro filter to the Burnside lens to be able to get even closer to the blooms. The Burnside allows you to get as close as 6″ from your subject, but adding a +1, +2, +4 or +10 macro filter lets you get even closer. I forgot to record it, but I believe I used the +10 or +4 filter for the first 3 images on this page. They were all shot handheld.