Some more Lensbaby photos of the bike wheel. This time- almost abstract impression of tire thread, with some color casts.

It is another photo I took for my Lensbaby class. I somehow managed to keep Ace lying on the gold reflector at least for a while, and was shooting photos of him. Later, snacks kept him well in place . It gave nice collection of not-traditional portraits. Lensbaby gave to soft, out of focus but recognizable image. This one had an added benefit. His pink nose in reflected image.

Not exactly smog… I was taking photos of the interstate from the bridge on the road to nowhere or close to there, and the view was just to my right. Right where my husband was waiting in the running car (0F outside). I turned and started shooting, when I noticed that the car exhaust is obstructing my view… but at the same time adding to the mood of the photo.

One more of bike wheel Lensbaby “abstractions” from weekend shooting. This is Lensbaby interpretation of moving bike wheel. Some interesting effects. Notice yellow valve .

Did I mentioned spending Saturday photographing bike wheel? Don’t think so. Well, seems like good abstract Lenbaby images can be achieved out of something that simple. The gold side of my large light reflector was not only directing light, but most of all-providing interesting background. It definitely added the color to the scene.

All right, maybe I am going to state the obvious, but I discovered yesterday that Lensbaby blur seems to be creating movement and busyness effect. I went out to photograph cars on the interstate yesterday at sunset. It was about 0F, by the way, and I was frozen when I got back in the car. I think I have close to 100 images with different extend of blur, and different level of abstraction. This one seems to be the most “real”. You can almost feel the rush of the road, and the feelings drivers have heading to the horizon.

Saturday again, assignment work for my Lensbaby class is in making. I actually had some fun shooing today. I put first the 2x telephoto on Lensbaby (by the way, it has a thread as digital camcorders, so it was dug out of my husbands stash), and then I got even braver- and put the 2x teleconverter under Lensbaby. Both worked like charm. I was aiming at the bunch of small birds on my bird feeder. I was posting some views of my deck bird feeder before, but this time I wanted a lot of birds, fighting, playing, whatever it is birds do. It was about noon, so with ISO 100 my shutter speed was in thousands, and I loved it! I was able to perfectly catch the movement of the wings without blurring it. Well, of course there is Lensbaby blur, but this was intentional. I also think that the teleconveretrs help to throw the view out of focus. It was a though choice to pick one photo for blog today.

Some more of smoke today. I did quickly Select and Replace color in CS4, corrected the showing up greens after turning the smoke into magenta back in Lightroom (Saturation and Local Adjustment Brush), and here we have another surreal pattern.

We recently got into a habit of burning some incense in the evening. It took actually a while before my husband finally got me interested into photographing the smoke they are producing. I remembered Jeff Revell doing a feature on his blog some time ago, but his focus was on Photoshopping it into colorful pattern. I needed some more technical advice on setup, best – for Nikon and SB-800 Speedlight. Deciding it cannot be that complicated, I went to do it myself after all. Besides setting up the black background, turning the flesh into Remote mode was the easiest task. I used Nikon D40x on-camera flash as Master, at the same time covering it up so no front light was placed on the smoke. Tricky, but hey, this is an amateur camera. With some trial and error I got the flash settings right, and spent additional time for figuring out how much to the side the off-camera flash should be placed (left and waaaay back) and how to cover it so it is not putting ANY light on the background – the effects are stunning.

I gave some more thought on yesterday’s assignment and how disappointingly it turned out. I have a few conclusions, one of them being that the larger (wider or higher) scene or object placement would allow me to add the Lensbaby effect, but my scene was simply too compact. On the other hand, I could have used macro, and probably would, but it is supposed to be this week subject, and I didn’t want to run out of ideas. Which I have a lot in this moment, and simply cannot wait to start placing them on the table and shoot… Anyway, the photo which was distinguished this week is what I feel like a bit of cheating. I took a background which was already fuzzy and with many patterns and colors, and placed a vase up front. Turned out interestingly. What is even more interesting, that I took this photo as last, in the act of desperation, and ultimately replaced with it poinsettia photo, which I thought was not sharp enough where it was supposed to be.