I just got a Lensbaby 2.0 for Christmas and I’m having lots of fun learning and playing.

A lensbaby is a 50mm completely manual lens with a flexible body to enable you to angle the front element moving the focus point to anywhere you want.  Aperture is changed by placing a small magnetic disc into the front of the lens.  With no disc in place the lens shoots at F2.0 making for a really small sweet spot or up to a max of F8 by using the smallest disc.  Since no blades are needed to create the opening, the aperture is perfectly round resulting in very smooth bokeh and any out of focus highlights are nice and round.  In order to focus the lens you need to compress it with your fingers until the desired focus is reached.  The sweet spot is fairly small and the focal plane is curved due to the fact that the lens is so simple in design and has no correction like most modern lenses do.  As you can imagine this takes a bit of getting used to, but the results can be quite surreal. 

You can check out their website for more info.
http://www.lensbabies.com/

It’s going to take me a while to really get the hang of this thing, but here are a few of my first shots.

for more images.

Last weekend the usual crew got together for a trip to Central Park for some last minute fall foliage shots. It was a little cold out, but overall turned out to be a really fun day.

The rest of the gallery is HERE.

My cousin Lisa entered a contest on Broadwayworld.com and needs all the votes she can get.

Click here to Vote!

This weekend we took a trip down to Brooklyn with some family to visit the building that my Great Grandmother used to own. We spent the afternoon walking around and made our way to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

I have not been to the promenade in at least 10 years, back when I had no interest in photography. So this was my first chance to shoot the Brooklyn Bridge. Here are some shots from the day.

I am proud to be part of the first ever I Love Indie Holiday Gift Guide.
Not only am I featured, but I also happened to write all the code to put it all together. Go check it out.