Lensbaby Photo Hunt

  A couple weeks ago I was listening to an episode of The No Name Photo Show Podcast.  They were talking about specialty lenses such as fish-eye, tilt-shift or macro.  These are lenses that have a specific purpose and are not going to be used for everyday shooting.  One of the hosts described these as "funk-buster" lenses.  Whenever he gets into a rut, he'll put one of these lenses on his camera and force himself to shoot something a little out of the ordinary.  Another lens that fits in this category is the Lensbaby.  Lensbaby lenses are a type of selective focus lens that gives you a small area of sharp focus and very blurred backgrounds. 
  Around the time this podcast was aired, Lensbaby announced a photo scavenger hunt.  They gave a list of 10 subjects and a few weeks to shoot the pictures.  I thought this sounded like a great idea.  When I mentioned it to Kristi and the kids, they all thought it sounded fun as well and started giving me ideas for some of the shots.  It took me right up until the day before the deadline, but I was able to get a picture for all ten subjects.  All of the following pictures were shot on my Canon T1i with a Lensbaby Composer with Dual Glass Optics.

1. Every Morning

The easy answer for this would have been to shoot a sunrise.  But, the whole point of this is to go beyond the easy.  My original thought was to get a picture of cars at the drive thru at Timmy's or Dunkin.  Kristi gave me the idea of toothbrushes.  This is a real good example of the selective focus of the Lensbaby.  I have also found that I tend to like the 1:1 square crop with Lensbaby shots.

2.Round and Round We Go 

This picture was all Hannah's idea.  After I finished shooting Lexi for the #3 picture, Hannah had me come over to the other side of the playground.  This was an interesting picture to shoot, as I had to climb to the top of this part of the playground and lean over the spiral shooting straight down.  We tried a couple different poses but with her sitting criss-cross, framed within the loops worked the best.

3. What Goes Up 

This was a challenging shot to take.  Catching a shot on swings is a feat using a traditional lens with fast autofocus.  The Lensbaby is an all manual lens and can take a little work to get the focus dialed in to where one wants it.  I had to get the focus about where I wanted and hope I caught Alexis when she was at the right spot. 

4. Wide Open Spaces 

This was one of the last pictures I took for the project.  The pictures had to be posted by the Saturday September 30th.  It so happened I was off on Friday the 29th.  After I did my morning errands, I headed up to Niagara Falls.  Crossing into Canada by myself on a weekday is always an adventure.  The Canadian Customs never want to believe that I'm going up by myself to do things like take pictures for fun.  As soon as I cleared customs, it started raining.  I was able to hold out until the rain died down to a light drizzle and get my shot.  I wanted to get something more than the plain shot of the Falls.  Having the viewfinder in the foreground helps convey the scope and openness of the shot.

5. All My Friends 

This is my favorite picture of the shoot.  Early on, we came up with the idea of a group of stuffed animals for the All My Friends shot.  I just hadn't figured out how I wanted to make that work.  I was considering setting them up in chairs around the fire pit or something like that.  Then, I had the idea of having a book bag overfull of animals.  The kids got their book bags and a bunch of animals and we fit in as many in as we could.  After I took some shots of Zach by himself, I had Hannah join him.  Once they were both lined up, I had them hold hands and then I had them look at each other.  Once I got this shot, I knew right away that this was the shot I was going to use.

6. Time 

For this shot, I added an extension tube to the lensbaby so I could get a macro shot of the watch.  Here you can really see the selective focus of the lensbaby. I initially wanted to get a long exposure shot that had a sweep of the second hand, but since the second hand on this watch ticks with each second, I ended up with what looked like multiple second hands instead of a blurred sweep.  Since I couldn't get that effect, I went back to the shorter exposure seen here.

7. A Real Hero 

This is my least favorite picture of the shoot.  I'd like to think I could have done something a little more outside the box for the theme of this picture.

 8. Coming Home

This is the last picture I shot for the photo hunt.  I had no idea what to do for Coming Home.  Ironically, I came up with this idea as I was heading home after shooting at Niagara Falls.  This picture is along the same lines at the picture for Every Morning, with an abstract shot of an item that is essential in the completion of the topic.

9. Slow Life 

As I was driving to Veteran's Park to shoot #7, I noticed these two sitting down by the river.  Fortunately, they were still there after I shot my other picture and made it back to Niawanda Park.  But then again, it is the slow life and they're not in any hurry to get anywhere.

10. Dig

While I was shooting Hannah's picture for Round and Round We Go, Zach was just minding his own business digging in the wood chips under the playground.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the stories that went behind them.  I had a blast shooting them.  That being said, I am looking forward to putting a lens on the camera that is sharp and easy to focus.  Like it was mentioned in the beginning of the post, this is a special use lens and is not meant to be a daily driver.  If you do have a chance to shoot something like this, by all means put it on your camera and go have fun.

That's about it for now.  I have a couple ideas kicking around for next week.  Happy Shooting everyone.