Tag: Lensbaby Composer

Discipline Over Passion

This post by John is timely as I am thinking hard and long about making some changes in my life. I'm wearing myself out chasing too many passions and, for far too long, have lacked the discipline of focus. I want to focus on fewer passions while using deliberate practice to enforce discipline around my efforts.

My true commitments are small, just like the set of my true disciplines. In contrast, my passions are as wide and as varied as life itself, and many of them are just temporary, fleeting and fanciful parts of history that will be gone before I know it.

So, naturally, it's better to invest in all of the areas of your life around your disciplines, the set of core commitments you've made, and the things that you are fundamentally for and not against. Again, that set is smaller than you and I probably realize and/or admit.John Saddington

Rudolf W. van der Goot Rose Garden

I took these photographs during a photo walk in the Rudolf W. van der Goot Rose Garden with the Somerset County Photography meet up. I think we missed the bloom period for the roses. The specimens on display seemed tired. I put the best of the set over on flickr.

Saturday 28 June, 2014 | Nikon D5100 | Composer | 1⁄60 sec | ISO 100
Lensbaby | Saturday 28 June, 2014 | Nikon D5100 | Composer | 1⁄125 sec | ISO 200

Lensbaby Macros

I got up this morning and checked my phone to see that I had a text from my client. The delayed opening is delayed further. This winter weather is affecting my revenues. I expect to have a 25% financial shortfall this quarter. Sigh!

I had a strange night. I went to bed around 10 PM but had difficulty falling asleep. I had weird dreams about wide-angle zoom lenses. The entire night! Perhaps because I was reading through some of the photography articles on my iPad right before bed. I'm not sure, but I was not too fond of it. I woke up feeling tired.

Tuesday 18 February, 2014 | Nikon D5100 | Composer | 0.5 sec at f/11 | ISO 100

As I made my breakfast, I thought that perhaps I needed to get something out of my system. It's been a while since I used my camera equipment. Using the 35mm meant going outside and walking around. Perhaps I could find something inside to shoot with the 85mm. I saw the flowers on the dining table and decided to shoot that. But then I realised the 85mm has a long focusing distance. I wanted to shoot something close-up. I remembered I had Frank Veronsky's Lensbaby Composer and macro kit.

I experimented with different f-stop settings until I found one that gave me the depth of field that I wanted. f/8 didn't give me the results I wanted, so I tried f/11 and f/16. I lit the flowers from above using three 60W daylight compact fluorescents. I shot in manual mode on a tripod and a Sekonic lighter-meter to set the exposure.

The images were processed in Adobe Lightroom and Color Efex Pro.

Tuesday 18 February, 2014 | Nikon D5100 | Composer | 1.0 sec at f/16 | ISO 100