Blurring the edges

After all the effort to unearth my Lensbaby I had a play around with it today at a local park, as I was wondering whether I could use it during some photoshoots to get some shots which are a bit edgier. A Lensbaby is a cute, but odd looking lens that mimics the effect of a tilt & shift lens. It looks like a short piece of black vaccuum cleaner hose with the same bendiness and it gets some peculiar looks. By stretching or contracting the hose bit and bending it at the same time you can determine where the point of focus is (the so called sweet spot) and also distort the areas around it. I've got version 2.0 which you manually hold in place as you press the shutter. More recent versions have systems to fix it in place. Getting to grips with it again was a steep learning curve but I quickly remembered how to handle it and with a very willing model I got some quite nice images for its first trip out in perhaps two years. You can't set the aperture in camera - you choose a disc with a hole which

defines the aperture. I think the one it had in it was f/5.6. Using the camera on AUTO was a complete disaster - totally over exposed, so I constantly checked and changed the shutter speed. It was a bright sunny day with the occasional passing cloud, and we moved from open grass areas into shady woodland. So we ranged from around 1/600th to 1/2000th of a second.

Anyway I've fallen in love with it again and will include it in my camera bag so that it's available for all my shoots. I'll carefully pick and choose which client I first use it with - it'll have to be a shoot where everything has gone swimmingly, it's all in the bag and I've got a willing model to practise with it on. Before the end of the week I'll have a go at some daffodils as they've all suddenly bloomed this weekend and Spring really feels like it has sprung. It's amazing what a lift a bit of warm sun on your face gives you. The grass was cut this afternoon, we had our first barbecue of the year (and I'm sure we weren't the only ones!) and the children dragged out every blanket, cushion, teddy, hammock etc insight.

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!