FAQ for Photographers: Lensbaby, baaaaaby

Yes, I know. I’m a terrible blogger. It’s been OVER A WEEK since my last post, and that’s just really unacceptable. So don’t leave me, readers! I’ll try not to let you down again. :)

One of the reasons for my lack of blogging is my lack of material TO blog. It’s been a slow time these past few weeks, and I have to admit, it was sending me straight into the doldrums. I know I’ve got so many fun projects and trips and weddings coming up this year, but it’s hard not to feel a little discouraged when you haven’t been able to do what you wake up itching to do every day. So I decided today to just get out of the house and shoot for funsies. Would I have rather had a funky, stylish, crazy in love couple to shoot? Yeah, probably. But it was a good challenge for me, to retrain myself to notice and shoot small everyday things like I used to. I also challenged myself to shoot only with a Lensbaby, which made things very interesting. This is a lens I purchased about this time last year, when I had just discovered a little green-eyed monster called Gear Envy. It’s a dangerous trap for new photographers to fall into, and I have been no exception. In the beginning, I thought there were so many lenses and gadgets and programs I just HAD to have, when really, I didn’t. If I were to do it all over, I would definitely spend more time shooting, shooting, shooting, and less time wishing and impulse-purchasing and envying. Because honestly, no matter how much research I had done at that point, I still didn’t REALLY know what I needed. And the Lensbaby is one of those things I really didn’t need. It’s more of a novelty lens than a workhorse, and I often find myself throwing it into my bag and forgetting about it, a) because it’s one of those things that you don’t really want to go overkill with and b) it can be kind of tricky and unpredictable, what with the manual focus (scary stuff, let me tell you), and the interchangeable aperture discs, and all that. And I haven’t sold it because one day Jamie decided to take a nap and let Gretchen chew up the lens cap and part of the body while he was sleeping. Soooo, today was the perfect day to dust it off and do some experimenting.

The Lensbaby is often referred to as the poor man’s tilt-shift lens (which is part of the reason I bought it— I was poor and wanted a tilt-shift lens). You can move the lens all around to change the plane of focus, resulting in one portion of the image being in focus with the rest thrown into a surreal blur. Very fun and dreamy effect, but again, you don’t want to overdo it. No bride wants all her wedding day pictures to be blurry, no matter how “artsy” they look. :)

So here are my the images I captured today, while on a crazy four hour trek around downtown Salt Lake to post flyers. Good thing it was SO gorgeous today!

Have a great weekend, y’all! Hopefully it won’t be too long until our next chat. ;)