Very striking. It looks especially nice with the black background. Cheers.

this is awesome and intriguing! the colors are spraying right off the shot. i love it!!

a technical question- is there a way to control the direction of "spray"? was it's location affected by something the eye doesn't read here? i assume you played with this through several shots?

kate: the "spray" is determined by how far you bend the lens away from the film plane. If you just compress or extend it, but don't bend it, you just tend to get a blur around the "sweet spot" of focus, but if you bend it as well you get a much more dramatic effect.

i much prefer the tilt shift look. the out of focus area in my opinion is not as smooth and appealing. just my 2 cents.

tristan: check back tomorrow as the shot I'm putting up is equally distorted but much smoother.

Technically, I find this image interesting. This lens is a great tool for experimentation and an opportunity for learning more about optics. However, graphically, I find the colours oversaturated. I feel like a kid in a candy store who has overeaten on the sweets. Perhaps it really does look this colourful, but its hard to be sure. The focus bleed is also hard on my eye. Perhaps its just me. I enjoyed your experimentation and hope you continue. congratulations on the new lens.

damn. i've been playing off and on with my lensbaby for over six months now and i still haven't gotten anything as dramatic as this. nicely done! off-hand, do you know how the 2.0 version differs from the old model?

CTC: saturation seems to be one of those things that we have different thresholds for. Personally, I'd call an image over-saturated if one of the colour channels were blown out, so for me this shot is vivid and highly saturated, but not overly so. Sure, it's not exactly true to life, but that wasn't my intention.

P: the Lensbaby 2.0 has a max' aperture of f/2.0 and, according to their website, "uses a coated, high refractive index, low dispersion optical glass doublet that creates a sweeter sweet spot of focus. The Original Lensbaby features a single uncoated optical glass element." The only other difference is that the aperture rings are held in place magnetically. I would guess that it's the change to the lens that might make a difference, but based on images that I've seen taken with the Original I'm not sure it makes a colossal amount of difference.

I'm away from town (Boise, Idaho, U.S.) and Internet for a couple of days...

I come back and turn on the Internet (directly to Chromasia of course)...

And BINGO! There it is again... Right in my face... You're still and always the guy whose everyday photographs make me (and I'm sure a few others) want to run right out and order a few thousand dollars worth of photo equipment from B & H.

wow - the colors are excellent! I've been thinking about gettin one of these, I'm really glad you posted this image!

Im not sure if I like this new lens playing...maybe Im just not that type of person. I prefer focus...most of the time. This shot is better than yesterdays though.

I was a bit taken aback when I first saw today's shot. I've no experience with the Lensbaby and didn't immediately recognize it (especially since you didn't have one just a day or two ago). The streaked focus is what confused me. The effect was similar to a zoom lens racked in during the shot.

The subject (with peeling paint, multiple angles) is interesting and even more so with the lens effect.

I'm sure the colors are well saturated (and to further interesting effect), but I'm been surprised by multiple comments lately that the shots presented aren't, in essense, straight enough. We see a revolution in artistry delivered by the recent boom in digital cameras and desktop darkrooms.

Yet, some comments seem to say that none of those advances should be used, that it is too much when the artist manipulates the shot. Even Ansel Adams regularly manipulated the negative's image to deliver a photograph that matched what he saw in his mind. And there was a migration in his images, even "Moonrise, Hernandez" was printed more constrasty in subsequent incarnations.

While I know you encourage criticism, please use it to channel your vision, but don't let it tone down your wonderful and talented explorations. So many of us are very happy to watch your journey, frame by daily frame.

quote "You’re still and always the guy whose everyday photographs make me (and I’m sure a few others) want to run right out and order a few thousand dollars worth of photo equipment " peter cohen.

Hmmm.........now where can I hide all those warehouse express invoices, and I must make sure I catch the credit card bill as it falls through the letterbox :P

Well I like radical shots and Im not arsed about people breaking any *rules* or correcting with too much PS etc etc, I just like what I see, not having a photography background I suppose Im biased and a bit more open than the old school.... and the chappies over at adobe...keep it coming fellas....the more bangs and whistles...the more fun. ;)

So....I like this one, good range of colours for an intresting building in obvious need of some paint and care, makes me wonder what it would be like driving to work there everyday, great first outing with your new toy....I remmeber liking Andys shots over at deceptivemedia so its lensbaby...added to the "when Ive got some spare cash list" ;)

Really wonderful! This is certainly one of the best LensBaby shots I've come across. In response to some of the conversation that's been going on, I also think the color saturation is high, but by no means extreme. Balance is definitely the key, and you, as always, landed in the sweet spot.

Paul,

Mercifully, (and this is where Allah REALLY gets merciful...) I'm not into the "keeping" of Earth-women, so I can damn well buy whatever I please (I know, it's a strange notion), and that without ever feeling the need to hide or explain anything! ;-)

Although, what I think David has is vision, AND photography skills. All the equipment I could ever afford wouldn't make me the photographer he is.

hehe! ;-)

Thanks for posting these - they're not my favorite pictures, but I like seeing what different lenses and techniques will do. The effect is very similar to the old trick of zooming while the shutter is pressed to create a sense of explosion - only with this you can maintain a spot that is still in focus. Very cool.

Congrats on the lens. Personally, I believe all Lensbaby photos are somewhat of a cliche. The subject matter does change, yet the same effect on this seems to be the primary focus of the picture. It seems as if the lens were doing the work for you as opposed to the other way. I normally love your pictures for how you work to get them just right. Not one of my favorites, and I agree with CTC. I feel the colors far too saturated.

I can say only one word:

explosive.

DJN... I normally love your pictures but this one makes me want to vomit! It's like a technicolor vertigo something or other. The lens baby effect is cool and I know you will come up with a really creative way of using it to give it that "Chromasia" POP!

"This is awesome ..." to "... this one makes me want to vomit!".

Cool. I'm much happier when I put up something that generates a range of responses. Maybe not quite such a large range as "awesome" to "vomit", but something that generates a discussion, in my book, is definitely a success ;-)

The colors and the subject shot are really great, but personnally I'm dubious about these types of easy effects when it's not particularly relevant to the subject. There seems to be a big fashion a the moment with selective focus which, like every gimmick, should be used with care to keep its interest over time. In this picture, I agree with some others by saying that I would have prefered no focus effect for that scene. In my opinion, there's a very good use of selective focus on orbit1 blog on this example because it makes the urban scene look like a model.

Nice one Dave, keep em coming. A lot of people will never understand anything but straight photography, don't let them put you off!

Belle Vue, indeed. Excellent.

~the saturation level is darn appealing~

The lensbaby effect, to me, seems one of the worst incarnations of a selective focus trick I've come across since I first encountered the work of Keith Carter. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy appropriately used selective focus, and your fashioning of a homemade selective focus lens produced really nice results in your first image. But even lensbaby 2.0 gives that horrible (in my opinion, keep in mind) streaking look. The subtlety of a faux depth of field or even (what has come to be) "normal" selective focus is entirely lost with this lens.

When I walked in to one of the camera stores I frequent recently, I found they were selling these things, which I really found disappointing. I think it's possible to use selective focus in a way that you don't instantly notice the technique. But with the lensbaby, it seems as obvious every time as throwing diffusion in front of a lens for an 80s-style wedding portrait.

Not that there's anything wrong with that... haha.

looks good - I really would like to try this lensbaby myself :)
I'm also courious for the next image ....

greetz!

djn: so you're saying that you only put things up to get a rise out of people?
chromasia exists for the public.. not for you? I think that's rather crazy :) It's just a big mind-game then..

This shot gives me a headache.. The focus is crazy..

miklos: if I put up a crap shot then it doesn't get many comments. If I put up a really nice portrait of one of the kids it gets quite a lot of positive comments. And both of those are reasonably predictable outcomes. With shots like this though I don't know quite how people will react – I like it (clichéd effect though it may be) – but I wasn't sure how everybody else would react so it's nice to see what other people get from it.

Oh, and thanks for the back-handed compliment, but I haven't got the talent to take enough shots such that I could choose the ones that I thought would generate more debate. Just about everything that I think is a decent shot gets put up here – cliché, cute, thought-provoking, didn't quite work, stuff I'm happy with, and so on.

you didn't answer my question though. well I guess you did in a round-about way :)

well, i really like the colors..
-

David -

I have an LBO and I just love it! Check out my Lensbaby set on Flickr!

I use the Tokina .45x conversion lens, both 22mm and macro. It's a great little add-on.

One more thing... I mostly use the f4 ring. Not near as much fuzz.

miklos: ok, no, I don't put things up to get a rise out of people, and no, chromasia's sole reason for existence is not the public, and no, it's not a mind game. Is that direct enough? ;-) That said, when I put something up I do wonder what people will make of it, and I guess that's what I was referring to in my previous comment – that when I put something "different" up I don't know what reaction I'll get, and in many ways that's more enjoyable than knowing that I'll get a lot of positive comments on a shot I know is OK/good or a few so-so comments on a mediorce shot.

Russ: I've not had a chance to try the other aperture rings yet. And thanks for the link to your Flickr gallery – I'll check it out. As for the Tokina converter: I'm broke :-/

Everyone else: thanks :-)

Yeah, congratulations on the photobloggies.

There are so many comments here that I wasn't going to comment. What can I say that hasn't been said. Well, probably nothing, but I'll comment anyways!

I'm having a love/hate reaction to this photo. I'm all for gadgets and so on one level this is a very cool photo. The colors are magnificent - but I'm a bit of a color whore. (I like bright saturated colors - the bolder the better for my tastebuds!) The different levels of focus and motion are....both interesting and disturbing. Someone mentioned vertigo and that was my response too. I don't think I could look at this picture hanging on a wall for long.

What I'd like to see is the same photograph taken with a regular lens focused on the sign letters with a shallow depth of field and the same high saturation. For a comparison to see if one is more interesting than the next.

Birdie: this garage is within a couple of miles of where we live and I've meant to photograph it a few times. I'll make the effort to take a straight shot of it some time soon.