say cheese photos: Look What the Stork Brought...

I'm a proud new mama.

But not of a real baby (and certainly won't be for a while) and not of another kitten (even though last post still really makes me want one). Nope, I got a lensbaby. I'm such a sucker. I love that name. Lensbaby. Adorable. If you know me, it should come as no surprise that I first read up on this lens system because I thought the name was cute. Too. Darn. Cute. And I'm a sucker for its packaging, too. When I opened the box with my new lensbaby in it, on the top was a green pamphlet with "mama?" written on the front, like it was a baby bird hatching and asking if it belonged to me. Yes, such a sucker for those things...

But cute gimmicky names and packaging aside, I think it's going to be a great addition to my camera bag. Mind you, it will never be my primary lens. But it's a type of camera lens that allows for some really creative effects. It tilts and spins around to allow for selective aperture affects and comes with four different optic pieces that can be swapped out (kind of like swatches back in the day - they even come with bright neon colors to distinguish between them).

I bought my lensbaby on Friday, and by Friday night I was snapping photos.

These are just some slightly random shots taken around new york as I played with my new baby. The first four photos were taken with the double glass optic (for those of you who have now looked up the lensbaby). These last two photos, my subway shots, were taken using the single glass optic, which is supposed to create a vintage or dreamy feel to the photos. I think it works.

Now to the nay-sayers that say "who needs this lens when photoshop can achieve a lot of the same effects?", I must answer that I really don't like using photoshop. For me the fun is getting what I want using my camera, not my computer. Besides, lensbaby requires me to work in manual mode, which will finally force me to really get to know how my camera works. I often (read: usually) shoot in automatic mode. Not with my lensbaby though.