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To the Air with Lensbaby

Lower Queen Anne and the Space Needle

Lower Queen Anne and the Space Needle

People that know me know that I’m not terribly fond of flying. Ok. People that know me know that it freaks me out.

So it was with some trepidation that I boarded my first float plane, best described as an old station wagon with wings and pontoons for a twenty minutes scenic flight around Seattle. One of the more exotic gifts we received from our wedding, I was delighted we finally found a sunny day we could make it up to look at the city.

While I had my kit lens with me, for the most part I stuck with my Lensbaby, an awesome little device that gives you tilt angle effects easily. With a mount that lets you swap a variety of lenses into it, there’s plenty of interesting effects you can achieve. The most well-known is the “toy” or “model village” effect.

Vic wasn’t too pleased with this decision but I made a pretty effective argument that everyone can see and find photos of Seattle from the air, but not everyone is going to see them with a tilt-angle shot. Perhaps my case would have been less persuasive but for the amazing set of tilt-photos of Paris the week before in the New York Times.

While I tend to favor the blurry plastic that for me evokes a harsh, yet dream-like quality to a shot, I’m gaining more confidence with the Double Glass which provide clear “Sweet Spot” focus and blurs the rest depending on the aperture you’re shooting at.

So here’s a set of photos we snapped while up in the air. It’s tough to really get that sweet spot in place while flying around and I give props to anyone that can do. I think these are fun and not bad for an amateur, but it would take a lot more time up in the air to get the effect down just right.

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Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 12:49 am. Filed under: Northwesting, Photography Tags: , RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to “To the Air with Lensbaby”

  1. james Marohn says:
    June 30, 2009 at 7:23 am

    These are great! I should experiment with my lensbaby more… I got the macro kit and have done quite a bit within my garden:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/marohn_ja/sets/72057594097795207/

    But I haven’t done much outside of macro. Which aperture ring did you install? The one with the smaller or larger opening?

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