lensbaby love | fairview heights lifestyle photographer

if you’ve taken a peek into my camera bag, you know that i am a minimalist when it comes to my gear. when i go to a session, i carry two camera bodies + two lenses (among other things such as batteries, CF cards, etc) but all of my work is shot on two camera bodies + two prime lenses. however, i’d be wrong if i said that i didn’t have some fun photography accessories tucked away to play with from time to time. one of those fun photography accessories is my lensbaby composer pro sweet 35. it was actually gifted to me from a client + i fell in love immediately! the lensbaby is unique because of its ability to actually tilt the lens and shift the focus. this allows me to very selective about my focal point + then melt the background away in a much softer way than a traditional lens. while selecting the focus can be tricky (it is a manual focus lens) the results are definitely worth the work. there are aperture settings that you can select from which is helpful when trying to manage your focus. i typically shoot mine at 2.2 but would probably have better success if i shot at around 4.0. either way, you know i love soft images so this lens is a definite favorite for fun shots! this summer i plan to bring it to the pool and experiment with the water bokeh there! while it isn’t a lens that i use for any of my client work, it is super fun to play with for my personal work and i am definitely thrilled to have it as part of my minimal gear collection. the amount of control that i have over being able to tilt the lens makes it fun to play with different distortions and textures. you can keep your feet in one spot, tilt the lens from side to side and up and down and get nearly an entire gallery’s worth of variety just by tilting the lens. lensbaby offers an array of different choices and borrowlenses.com is a great place to browse if you want to play with a lensbaby before committing to purchasing one. i also have the mobile lensbaby lens + love having it in my pocket to add some creative bokeh to any of my iPhone images!