Take Photos of What You Love
I came across this piece of advice recently from a professional food photographer. He said, "Shoot what you love," and that made me pause and reflect. I enjoy taking all kinds of photos. I occasionally do event photography, even though I don't always feel comfortable doing so because it means using my flash, or I participate in workshops to stretch my skills. Taking photos of people that I don't know can be challenging for me, so my Wyoming workshop was a good way to learn.
My comfort zone is when I am walking around my neighborhood or streets in other cities to see what I can capture, such as this window that caught my eye in Greece. I can explore at my own pace and see what calls out to me.
However, I believe that it is important to learn from pros about how to take photos that are outside my comfort zone. I took this image during a workshop in Iceland. The lagoon was full of beautiful icebergs, but I have to admit I was a bit uncomfortable crawling into a zodiac boat and dealing with the cold winds. I did learn a lot though and have some wonderful images to remind me of that time.
But what do I really love? I love taking photos of flowers. Since this is the time of year that the blossoms start to appear each day, I am truly in heaven.
This love of flowers has led me to discover a variety of Lensbaby lenses, such as the Velvet 56 mm. The photo above and the one below were taken with my Velvet lens. I can get as close as five inches from the flower to capture the parts of the flower that call to me.
I first learned of Lensbaby by taking a Creative Live course on Flower Photography by Kathleen Clemons. She is considered to be the "Georgia O'Keefe" of flower photography. That course, and her helpful suggestions since then, has led me to explore other Lensbaby lenses, such as the Twist 60 and the Composer Pro Sweet 50 lens. Both have optics that allows you to create some very interesting images. The photo below was taken with my Sweet 50 lens.
As you can see there is a small spot of focus on the tulip in the middle while blurring the rest of the image. You can get up to 15 inches away from the subject, so I recently added a close-up filter that allowed me to be able to get much closer. These two images below were taken with the filter on my lens.
I fell in love with the combination of the Sweet 50 and close-up filters. Wow, I have found another creative way to capture the beauty of flowers. With the Sweet 50 you can tilt the lens to put the focus on a subject to the side, such as in the photo below. A word of warning, these lenses take practice, but it is well worth it.
I am grateful to the advice of the food photographer to "shoot what you love." It has given me a chance to reflect, learn, and go out Camera Walking to capture images of what I love - flowers. We love to hear from you, so comment below, post on our Facebook page, or send us an email.
