Creative photography with a Lensbaby

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

One way to become more creative is to photograph the same subject many times, but differently each time. At different times, with different lenses, distances and from different viewpoints!

To challenge myself, I once again ventured into the garden to photograph the Cosmos flowers. They continue to fascinate me with their cheerful, waving flowers and finely detailed leaves. They actually remind me of ballerinas: graceful and full of movement.

To recreate that effect in my photos, I chose to photograph with the Lensbaby Velvet 56mm. The defining feature of the Velvet is that it gives your photos a dreamy look, a kind of lovely glow, especially at apertures from 1.6 to 2.8.

The more you stop down the aperture (higher number), the less noticeable this effect becomes, and it turns into an ordinary 50mm lens.

If you don't have a Velvet or a similar lens, and you'd also like to create this kind of soft photo, you can achieve a similar result with soft filters (for example, the Lee soft filter set).

Unlike last time, I worked with colour gels this time (from Lensbaby, incidentally), as I hadn't experimented with them very much yet.

By holding these in front of the lens, you can create different colour variations. Blue, purple, pink, yellow, with every change in the light, the colours change.

I was very curious to see how this would turn out. But I was sold straight away with the very first photo!
If, like me, you love colours and shapes, you'll definitely find this fantastic too. It works almost hypnotically.

I catch myself taking lots of the same photos, as if I enter a kind of trance. Oh dear, I think, that means more time spent choosing and editing them.

When I look at photos for the first time, I make an initial division between amazing, acceptable or ready for the bin. I then drag the remaining photos into a collection, where I continue selecting them.

I prefer to do this on my mobile because I find it more organised that way (I use Lightroom Mobile for this). It also means I can quickly share photos on Insta or other social media if I want to.

Photofacts also has an excellent tutorial on quickly selecting your best images, with useful tips from the author and valuable additions from readers.

Do you have any nice tips for stimulating creativity yourself? Leave a comment!

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