Roxanne and I found an awesome art district in Sarasota. This section of town is crawling with cool little shops and restaurants. Add a Lensbaby and you have a recipe for some interesting images. The following image was captured with the Lensbaby Soft Focus optic. In Lightroom I added a vignette. To finalize the image, I opened it in Silver Efex Pro to convert it to black and white.

I saw this mannequin in a shop window. The red feathers intrigued me. I shot the image from below so I could capture the eyes. I tweaked the image in Lightroom and applied the Nik Color Efex Pro Bleach Bypass filter to the image, which made the reds pop.

The splash of vibrant colors from this outdoor cafe caught my eye. I walked around until I found a vantage point I liked and took the picture. In Lightroom I used the HSL/Color/Grayscale tab to increase the luminance of the primary colors to make the image pop.

I recently purchased a Panasonic GF-1. The camera uses the micro 4/3rds system. With the kit 14-45 mm lens, the camera has a focal length range that is the 35mm equivalent from 28mm to 90 mm. The camera is very small. The fact that is has a bigger sensor than point and shoot cameras means you’ll be able to control your depth of field with the lens aperture. Point and shoot cameras have a very small sensor which means that point and shoot cameras are not good for portrait photographers or any other type of photographer that requires a small depth of field.

This camera is great for street shooters. My only complaint is the noisy shutter. One time I pressed the shutter button and my subject, who was 10 feet away asked if I took his picture. Overall, I’m really enjoying the camera. If you’re a professional photographer the GF-1 is an excellent alternative when you don’t want the carry an expensive camera everywhere. The camera has point and shoot functionality. But for pros, the camera offers a lot of flexibility including the ability to shoot RAW images. The following image was photographed using the 14mm focal length.

Lensbaby introduced two new optics for the Composer: a fisheye optic, and a soft focus optic. The fisheye has a focal length of 12mm, and  depth of field that seems to go clear into next month. It’s a true fisheye. Images photographed with the lens have a black vignette outside a round center that contains the image. If you choose your subject matter well, the vignette enhances the image. The following image was photographed with the Lensbaby fisheye optic. I tweaked the photo in Silver Efex Pro.

The soft focus optic gives you a wonderfully soft diffuse image surrounding a relatively sharp center. The optic comes with different aperture inserts you can use to control how large the sweet spot of focus is. The following images were photographed with the Lensbaby soft focus optic.

The Lensbaby is positively addictive. Now that I’m using the Composer, I find it easier than ever to catch the sweet spot of focus and get a great looking shot. When I add Nik Silver Efex Pro to the mix, I end up with some truly compelling shots.

Yesterday I shot lots of images. I started the day in Corkscrew Sanctuary Swamp. The birds were sparse, but Roxanne and I got some nice landscape images, and lots of Lensbaby shots of flowers in the butterfly garden. Then we went to the Edison Winter Home in Fort Myers, Florida. The home has one of the largest Banyan trees in the world. There is also a lot of period furniture on the grounds. I shot this image with my Lensbaby Composer. I edited the shot using Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Edison Winter Home

Here are a couple of new pictures that I tweaked using a texture treatment in Photoshop.

Lensbaby Bird of Paradise with Texture Treatment

Lensbaby Macro Shot with Texture Treatment

I drove across Blackburn Point Bridge on a bleak Winter day last January. Ever since then I’ve had an image in my mind of this bridge photographed with a wide angle lens. Roxanne and I were photographing Scrub Jays in Oscar Scherer State Park. When the clouds started forming on the afternoon sea breeze, I suggested going to Blackburn Point Bridge to photograph the sunset. We got there about 20 minutes before sunset and were rewarded with awesome light and some terrific clouds. I got my wide angle shot of the bridge and much more. Like I said, “Sometimes you get lucky.”

Blackburn Point Bridge

Sunset in Paradise

Here’s a picture of a Golden Orb Spider shot with a Lensbaby Composer. I tweaked the image in Photoshop using the Nik Multimedia Tonal Contrast filter and the Alien Skin Exposure 2 filter using the Velvia 50 preset.

Take a perfectly good image, add a couple of layers with pictures of textures, play with the blend modes, and you may end up with something very painterly.