So far , I am limiting myself to my yard for flower shots this year. We have a few tulips so I have been practicing with focusing with the lens baby at a wide aperture. I think this one was at f4, ISO 1000, handheld, 1/250 sec.
Any commentary fair game.
Best to all
Kathy
This is lovely Kathy. Beautiful blurring in the background and the colors /detail of the tulip couldn’t be better. I am definitely going to have to get a “lens baby” lens. Take care.
The one I used here has a bellows type thing so you can move the plane of focus around. It’s all manual focus so a devil to get in focus if using wider aperatures. I go in spells working with it. Thank you for the comment!!
Kathy, this is a nice look at the tulip, and I am impressed with your accomplishment with that type of Lensbaby. I had 2 different ones, and I think I have given them both away. I just never mastered using them. I bought one and won the other in a photo contest, just so you don’t think I am nuts for buying the second since I never learned to use the first. 
Shirley I don’t think your experience is unusual. I got this lens about 4 years ago, used it for a month and then put it away for about a year. Every time I use it my back hurts because of all the contortions, even though it is way lighter than my macro lenses. There is no way to use a tripod with this lens, it just doesn’t work as well. My success with it has been hit and miss, more miss.
Kathy: I remember when the first Lensbaby came out that it was a pretty hot fad for a while and then kind of faded away. I think enthusiasm for innovative techniques (remember cramming?) and equipment waxes and wanes but there is a niche for these kind of images, especially good ones like this. I’m not sure if you hadn’t mentioned the use of the Lensbaby that I would have guessed whereas a lot of the early images that came out were obviously out of the ordinary. I do like your POF and the BG especially. Kudos for your efforts producing a top notch image.>=))>
Thanks Bill! You can get pretty “far out” if you crank the bellows around as far as it can go to one side or another. If you do that , though, it makes it even harder to focus as your plane of focus will not line up with the plane of the camera sensor. So, in trying once again to more reliably master this thing, I am limiting efforts to a more central spot of focus most of the time. I really did not appreciate that when I first started using the lens baby, thinking that the spot of focus traveled as a constant size spot as you cranked on that bellows.
Kathy, your persistence has paid off beautifully here. The tulip’s center shows nice detail while the background has a strong painterly feeling. The edges of the tulip go soft in a way that fits well with the background. My one thought is to burn-in the background just a bit. Yes, as Bill says, both specialized equipment and techniques seem to wax and wain. However, I think they all have some value in limited circumstances, the challenge is finding the situations that work for you.
I like this a lot, Kathy. It’s amazing how the in-focus areas don’t seem to quite reflect what I expect, but work very well together while the image retains such an ethereal look.
This shot of the same flower is beautiful too for the luminosity. There is something more for the splendid emotion of the background. So I love this even more Kathy.
