You find yourself in a rut. So, someone kindly sets you up on a blind date. They tell you how wonderful this person is and how you simply just have to meet him/her. You’re excited and eagerly await the moment of meeting.
The day arrives - he/she looks super cool and things are great for a few moments, but then the excitement abates and you feel uncomfortable. You hadn’t realised how settled you were in your old routine and meeting someone new is definitely testing that comfort zone. Things aren’t familiar, you’re having to think out of the box, things aren’t ‘connecting’ as you thought they would be but hey, he/she does seem nice so, stiff upper lip and let’s keep trying.
Several meetings later things are falling into place. The uncomfortable is becoming comfortable and the challenge, which you almost walked away from, is rewarding you with positivity.
So who was this blind date with? It was with a Lensbaby Sol 45!!
For months I had been feeling that whilst things, photographically, were running smoothly I wanted desperately to shake things up! I needed to be challenged, to see things differently and I didn’t know quite what my next step should be. I even considered walking away from macro and trying a different genre. I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew I didn’t want ‘safe’ and I wanted to rouse my creativity again.
Let me tell you that the Lensbaby lenses certainly make me see things differently! There’s no autofocus - it’s all manual. To be honest this doesn’t bother me as all of my macro work is manually focused. What was a change for me though, was to go from using narrow apertures to a fixed 3.5. This forced me to chose a small area on which to focus and to allow the focus to drop off elsewhere. For someone who likes things tack sharp this was quite a barrier for me to cross. The other area offering potential for experimentation is the option to add macro filters to the lens, thus magnifying the subject. The fixed aperture Lensbaby lens behaves very differently to my macro lens and responds differently to light so it really shook up my creative thought process. In fact for a period of time I was producing really average shots (at best!) and I was hugely frustrated. I didn’t even associate this phase with the change of lens but felt I had completely lost my mojo!
But now I am seeing which flowers and plants are, to my mind, ideal subject matter for the Sol 45. I am looking even closer, identifying the the most beautiful detail on which to place my focus. I am playing with the macro filters, choosing how close I want to get. So many new decisions! It is still early days but my Lensbaby and I are starting to form a strong creative bond!
What I haven’t yet mentioned is that the Sol 45 has 2 bokeh blades directly in front of the lens. They look a little like windscreen wipers and can have their position adjusted to play with available light, creating soft bokeh around the subject. Oh, and the lens tilts! So you can move the lens’ aim directly at your point of focus. Can you see now why the blind date felt a little dodgy and out of my comfort zone at first?!!
Now that I am slowly getting to grips with the lens I am really looking forward to using the Sol 45 for portrait photography and it’s a perfect lens for newborn work. It would be great for street images too - must try that.
If after reading the above you are wondering if I have any affiliation with Lensbaby I can assure you that I do not. I am just another Lensbaby customer who has fallen in love! We are not talking marriage yet, but things are going well.
The courtship with my Sol 45 will surely have a happy ending.