A recent acquisition of mine is a Lensbabies 3G kit, with macro adaptors, as well as telephoto and wideangle lenses. This is a great lens for creative portraiture, because it allows you to create “selective focus”, or a “sweet spot” in your picture which you can move around the frame to any position you want, leaving the rest of the image in a crazy looking almost radial blur. Special aperture inserts can be used to create special shaped specular highlights (the out of focus bright points in the background) in shapes like stars and hearts. This is fantastic for use in wedding and engagement photography for that special romantic look. Its not a lens you would use all the time (in part because its 100% manual and quite tricky to get a good focus with) but it does create a great effect when used. My best tip for Lensbaby use, is practice practice practice. A full frame camera body with a big bright viewfinder is also of great assistance.

I will be posting up a few images taken with this lens, but for now here is a shot of Zakk, who works for Alan Moyle at Photobat. We were messing about taking photos on Sunday night after the AIPP seminar, before dinner, and this photo gives a good indication of the Lensbaby effect. No photoshop filters here people!