February 2006

Kay Warren Book Cover Image

The fun thing about photography is that there always seems to be a new toy to play with. And with me being a total gadget freak and tech-head, it can sometimes be a dangerous and pricey combination! Last summer the new toy was a “Lensbaby”. If you have not heard of them, they are a fun and relatively inexpensive gadget for selected 35mm SLR’s. They work in both the film and digital world. In fact I made use of it quite a bit in the UK during the 14 Days in Great Britain project. It is based on a pinhole camera where your image has a sharp spot in the center and has a vignette or blur around the edges. The cool thing about the Lensbaby is that you can move the sharp spot to virtually anywhere in the frame because the lens is actually flexible! It has a lot of applications but is ultimately just one more tool to experiment with. Given the fact that the bulk of our shooting these days is digital, we again made some major capital investments in digital equipment in the past few weeks, upgrading bodies, purchasing new specialty lenses, software, printers, computers…it never really ends. And it is both fun and frustrating as anyone who has ever touched a computer can attest to!

But we are once again (and I am sure for only a limited time) immersed in all of the latest and greatest toys and completely satisfied! That is until next weeks newest release that we won’t be able to live without.

btw, If you’d like to check out a Lensbaby for yourself, hop over to their website @www.lensbabes.com