Inspired by Now

Published: Sun, Jul 01, 2018

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

My daughter and I arrived to Hungary a few days ago. We will be visiting friends and family in July, and I will be taking lots of pictures!
We spent the weekend with my brother at the Balaton Lake. The weather wasn’t good enough for the beach, but it was perfect for taking a long walk. We toured the area after a huge thunderstorm.
I used the Burnside 35 exclusively during the walk. Since I had company, I didn’t record all the data for the images, but all of the pictures were taken with F2.8-F5.6 apertures.
For those of you who don’t like to do post processing, I will show the straight out of the camera pictures first, and the second image will have minor edits in Lightroom.

Right before we entered the small forest area, I stopped at this train tunnel. I felt that the topic was perfect for the lens (largest vignette used).

Published: Sun, Jun 24, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Family Trips, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photography

Yesterday I took the Burnside 35 with me on a family hike. I usually don’t take pictures of people with a manual lens, therefore I don’t have practice focusing on them quickly. I don’t like to ask people to wait for me while I focus, it makes me nervous when I do that. 🙂
I said I would post about my not too successful shoots as well; this is one of those posts. The lack of success is not from using the Burnside, but mostly from the lack of practice of manual focusing on people. Here are some of the images I took yesterday:

Here is the one photo that I am happy with:

A fossil found on a family hike in Southern California.

Published: Tue, Jun 19, 2018

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

Yesterday I met up with a photographer friend for a few minutes at Sherman’s Gardens. This is one of my favorite places to take floral images at. Knowing how much I like getting close to flowers, and that the Burnside 35 only lets me do close ups from 6″, I had ordered some Close up filters. When I left home I saw our mailman by the mailboxes, and I asked him if he maybe had a package for me. Luckily he did, and I was able to try out the Burnside with some magnification.
First I took test shots at a spot where I had taken one with the Sweet 50 before. They weren’t composed exactly the same way, but I liked the Sweet 50 image much more at this place than the Burnside 35. The latter I found too busy even with the vignette.

Published: Sat, Jun 16, 2018

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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Landscape, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photography, USA

The Lensbaby Burnside lens arrived yesterday. This morning it was low-tide, so I took the Burnside and the Velvet 56 to Little Corona del Mar (Newport Beach, CA), to one of my favorite low-tide places in Southern California.
I tested both lenses facing the same subject at all settings; with the burnside it meant using apertures F16 to F2.8, and with each aperture I used all 4 vignette settings. On the Velvet it was just the various apertures I tried.
My observations: my frame contained some cloudy skies, and with F16, F11, F8 and F5.6 the maximum vignette added too much darkness with the Burnside. I liked the maximum vignette with wider apertures, because what was darkened was also blurry (last two images).

Published: Wed, Jun 13, 2018

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

A few weeks ago I got a chance to apply to participate in a project called the Traveling Burnside, and I am one of the chosen participants. Due to my summer traveling schedule I was given a special opportunity to keep the new Lensbaby lens for a longer period of time instead of just a couple of weeks. I am extremely happy about this opportunity: having this lens (and other Lensbaby lenses) with me in Hungary in the summer will liven up my trip.
I have been taking photos in Hungary during my summer trips for over a decade, close to two. I’ve visited the same locations over and over with the hopes of capturing them from new points of view. Using the Lensbaby lenses this coming summer will definitely give me a new way of portraying my lovely birth town.Here are a few examples of how I have seen the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest in the past 8 years or so: