Post-pho-bi-a [post-foh-bee-uh]
noun
A persistent, irrational fear of blogging that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it. This typically happens when there has been a long interval between blogs and when work, life, and FB interfere with the amount of free time the blogger thinks he/she has.
See www.ruinism.com

There, it’s out of the way. I think it all started this spring when my Nikon D700 and newly acquired 35 1.4 lens was stolen while I was traveling in Milan. Thankfully I wasn’t physically hurt but it certainly depressed the hell out of me and sent me on a bit of a photo funk.
Now most of you know that I work for a small camera shop called B&H and have access to loads of camera gear. So instead of dropping another $2500 on a camera, I figured, now was a good time to really give some new and different cameras a workout. However what I failed to realize is that I had grown to love my D700. It, combined with either a Lensbaby or the Zeiss 21 2.8 lens had truly become an extension of myself.
So however many cameras I tried, I never felt “it” until my good friend at Fuji let me borrow the hard-to-get Fuji x100 for a month. Was it a perfect camera? No, but I also believe there is no perfect camera; we just try to find what best matches our needs. On a whim I brought the camera out to our last Bannerman Night Workshop of 2012. And that’s when I fell in love again. Yes, I was a sucker for the retro rangefinder design and the image quality was very impressive. But at night, during long exposures, it rocked!
The image above is called the Blue Hour. It was taken during the early morning as the night gave way to the day. You can see the small star trails at the top resisting the mists of the morning. It was a magical moment to capture but also to just sit back and enjoy.

However, soon after this shot, I had to return the camera to Fuji and it was again a long waiting list, even for a guy like me. But I’m a lucky fella, who married the right girl. Nancy had noticed how much I enjoyed “seeing” with this camera and surprised me by getting it for me for our 5th year anniversary.
So I’m back – inspired to shoot and back to blogging!

York Chip Yard

2009 is turning out to be a creatively successful year so far and March is packed with some great group shows as well as my first solo exhibit in NYC!

First up, the 11 th Annual International Krappy Kamera Show, which features one of my previously unseen images, opens on Tuesday March 3rd at the Soho Gallery.  This is always a fun exhibit featuring images made from creative artists and their toy cameras.  The Opening is from 6-8pm, with voting on the People’s Choice Award ending at 7:30pm, so get their early, drink some wine, enjoy the images, and vote!

Jill Waterman and Daryl-Ann Saunders curated and brought together some of the best modern nocturnal photographers for two exhibits featuring the fine art of Night Photography that will open on Thursday March 5th at the Farmani and Safe-T-Gallery.  These Galleries are right across from each other in DUMBO Brooklyn, and the opening will be from 6-8pm.  Several of these photographers will also be speaking at B&H’s Event Space on Monday March 9th.

On Friday March 6th a couple more openings:

First, my dear friend and fellow blogger and photoartist, Angelia Lane, will have several of her paintings featured at ArtSlant’s Group Show, World of Imagination.  The opening is from 6-8pm and will run to the end of the month at the APW Gallery’s new location at 48-18 Van Dam Street, Long Island City, NYC.

If you are heading upstate that week, one of my photos will be in a Group show titled Festival of the Visual Arts, at the Morton Library in Rhinecliff.   The Amtrak train drops you off within 3 blocks of the Library and the show is curated by the newly engaged Sandy Bartlett.

Now mark your calendars and plan your trip to NYC accordingly; I’ll be having my first solo show titled “The New York Years” at John Allan’s in Tribeca on Friday March 20th from 8:30-10:30pm!  This exhibit will be touring the four NYC John Allan’s locations throughout the year but you’ll definitely want to come celebrate with me on March 20th!

And finally, on the last day of the month come and test drive the newest Lensbabies at B&H’s Event Space.  David Brommer, Jennifer Diamond, and I will be giving a slideshow presentation on how to get the most out of these creative lenses and then take you on a photo safari as we Lensbabify Times Square!

So shake the winter blahs off and I hope to see you out there this March!

The f295 kickoff last weekend was a huge success!  Thanks to the over 150 people who came out to Saturday night’s 21st Century Photography opening!  The work and vibe must have been reminiscent of Stieglitz‘s old Camera Club openings!  Thanks  also to all that helped put the show together:  the artists who shared their work, The Camera Club of NY who gave their 500 square feet, David, Jennifer, and Amy on the B&H organizational end ~ as well as serving up a record amount of kosher wine!  And finally, Tom Persinger, who brought us all together and had one heck of a time trying to make letters stick on walls.

Wondering what camera to document the gallery opening with, I finally settled on using my trusty Panasonic LX-3, which is an advanced digital point and shoot.  The pioneering Panasonic has a little throwback feature, it has a pinhole scene mode!  See, I told you that pinholes were enjoying a renaissance!  For some reason the pinhole mode is limited to 3MP images while applying a vignette and desaturating the image.   I know it would have been better if the lens could have come off to reveal a real pinhole over the digital sensor but hey, I wasn’t going to get everyone to stand still for 5 hours for the group shot! All the images on the left were taken in this “pinhole mode” while the right hand side shows the packed house for Sunday’s presentation at the B&H Event Space.  For the second straight year over 80 people showed up to listen and learn about new ways to use older technology.

We all struggle with keeping our art and life fresh and new.  For photographers the terms wedding, portrait, landscape, pinhole, or even alt process can all pigeonhole and limit our vision.  Tom Persinger asks us to look beyond these stereotypes and empower the 21st Century Photography:

The 21st Century Photographer remains open to the exploration and use of a variety of processes, techniques, and technologies so long as the chosen method(s) most concisely articulate their creative vision. A net result of this paradigm shift is not only complete artistic freedom but also a palpable sense of empowerment. Historically photography has marched down the long path of process obsolescence – one in which new techniques replace old in a continual cycle of progress. In a 21st Century approach, however, control is wrestled from profit driven agencies -corporations, advertisers, and the marketplace all promoting a consumptive photographic model- and given to the artist/photographer. By virtue of taking the responsibility of control, photographers allow themselves to use a pastiche of tools and materials to make pictures. It is this freedom -which is new for many- that empowers and fuels the 21st Century Photographer.

Photography is a toolbox with many means to express your vision.  Some people choose one, others need multiple instruments to complete the vision.  This weekend I saw art that was in jars, painted on, waxed, dyed, and printed on anything from the latest digital technology to handmade emulsions on a variety of surfaces from tin, glass, and paper.  The photograph that I submitted in the show was originally a 6×9 slide.  I was deciding between two basic ways to present my print:
1.  Drop it off at a lab and have them make a negative copy of my positive slide and then a C-print
2.   Scan the slide and print at home on inkjet.
Now, my good friend and constant conscience, David Brommer, stood aghast when I told him that I  I was leaning towards the lab option;  mainly for convenience as I am still not 100% confident in my inkjet printing.  I’m still most at home in the B&W darkroom.  But he reminded me that I had to control the final outcome of my image.

And really, it is all about the process ~ from start to finish.

Now did I enjoy spending close to an hour digitally removing dust from my image?
No.
Is the excitement the same as flipping over the black and white image in the developer under the red light?
Nope.
But, seeing a project from start to finish is still pretty damn fulfilling.

The Lensbaby Composer lens has a unique optical swap system in which you can own one lens yet have 5 different capture methods.  Think of the ball and socket Composer as a chassis to hold multiple visions.  In my last two posts I have shown you images taken with the Zoneplate/Pinhole optic as well as the Plastic uncoated optic.  Both are fun and unusual ways of seeing the world in a whole new way.  Each one of the optics is a bargain for $35 each or I recommend purchasing the whole set for $95.  The set includes the Plastic, Pinhole/Zone plate, and the Single Glass optics.  All the optics are the equivalent to a 50mm lens, or what we would call normal vision.   The Composer and Control Freak lenses come with the Double Glass optic.  Because the double glass optic has multiple coatings it makes it the sharpest lens in Lensbaby Family.  If you want to buy The Muse Lensbaby you have the option of Plastic or Double Glass optic.
I’ve really enjoyed using the plastic and zone/pin optics but last week I made it a point to only shoot with the Double Glass lens and see how sharp it really was.  Let me preface this by saying that all the images I’ve taken in the last 2+ months have been with an APS-C sized digital camera sensor and are usually shot at f/4 or f/2.  If you shoot much beyond f/5.6 you start to lose the vignetting affect.  Also, if I were to shoot with a full frame digital or film camera the vignetting or out of focus area would be even greater.
I arrived Friday, in San Francisco on a night of the full moon.  My resolution this year was to do a night shoot each month during the full moon, so without wasting any time, I set up my camera and tripod on my brother’s second story deck in Glen Park.  I’ve wanted to do a Lensbaby night shoot and the rolling hills of SF lit up by the moon, the rare starry sky and the millions of twinkling lights were just taunting me.
The top image was taken facing the San Bruno Mountains and with a slight bend of the Composer, I focused on the distant radio towers and defocused the house-lit hills.  With the second image, I screwed on the wide-angle adapter to provide a more expansive point of view.  You can click on them to view them larger – which one do you like better?
A lot of people ask me, “Why do I want to use a Lensbaby?  I can do that effect in Photoshop.”  I always tell them that it is way more fun to control the effect while shooting and really interact with your subject in a brand new way; plus the pebbles of light that nightlights turn into is truly UnPhotoshopable!

Our last evening in Brooklyn, before we left for SF, we saw a great concert at a fantastical new venue, Galapagos.  The Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg recently located to DUMBO.  I feel this new space is more successful visually and spatially. Each banquette is it’s own island amidst a body of welcoming water.  The orchestra level also provides more pleasurable viewing (and photo) opportunities.  Performing that night were two bands from North Carolina and our hometown favorite Balthrop, Alabama.  The Never kicked things off with a pop/blues grass vibe.  I was really impressed with the 11 piece folk orchestra tunes of Lost in the Trees.  In fact, I was so impressed with them that we bought their album – Yes Vinyl!  The three concert shots to the left showcase the creative inspiration that a Lensbaby can add to musical venues.  I was bending the composer pretty extremely to limit the area of focus and add movement to the vibe of the photo.

Back to San Francisco, the main reason for my visit was to see my family.  My nephew Oliver, who has had his Lensbaby portrait taken on this blog previously, was of course the subject to probably 250 of the 300 shots that were taken on this trip.  Lensbaby babies and portraits are just guaranteed fun!  Imagine a world in which the person doesn’t know and is fascinated with this camera-tool that you are using.  I don’t know if that world exists, however with a Lensbaby mounted on your camera the 4th wall is broken and new eyes wait to be captured.  What is that bendable almost posable funky lens doing?  It even makes your camera quite retro!  9 times out of 10 it also makes you shoot in manual mode so it makes you think about your image-capturing even more.  Shooting Oliver on the swing took some practice and there was more misses then hits but when I got it, it was certainly a home run!

California has been a destination for many a lost soul looking for meaning.  And one of the most wonderful things you can do in your life, whether your soul is lost or found, is to witness a sunset along the California coast.   The unusually warm day brought a stellar sunset to the many people who had ventured out to Ocean Beach.  And there we stood, at the end of the world, watching the colors slowly fade to night.
Click.

In other news, I’m still recovering from the Eddie Adams Workshop up in the Catskills of New York, where I volunteered during the Columbus Day Weekend. This was the 21st annual EAW and the 4th that I have attended. It is the premier workshop for young photojournalists; thousands apply via portfolio but only 100 are chosen. Those 100 students are divided into 10 teams of 10 and then assigned a famous professional photographer, editor, and producer to their team. The workshop takes place at Eddie and Alyssa’s Barn in Jeffersonville, New York. The students are given 2 days to complete their assigned shoots, while the rest of the team work around the clock to edit and put together multimedia slide shows for the final presentation on Monday. The 100+ Industry heavies that come up and volunteer their time and share their stories make this an amazing community event in an industry that is not always the most communal. I usually average about 8 hours of sleep, total, for the whole weekend. But of course there is always a little mandatory after hours relaxation going on! I’m part of the Black Team, who runs all the behind the scenes activities like AV, IT, Security, Transportation, Hospitality etc. A really humorous movie about “Black Team Love” and what really happens behind the scenes was made by my man Andre Costantini and can be viewed here.

I’m also continuing my beta testing for Lensbaby who sent me an updated Composer with the Plastic and Pinhole/Zone Plate Optic kits. As mentioned in my previous blog, the new Lensbaby Composer is actually a unique housing for several types of Optical Elements that Lensbaby calls their Optical Swap System. Essentially you can own one Lensbaby but have up to 4 different optical effects! I was very excited to try the Plastic Optic as it is a single plastic lens that is suppose to have the image quality similar to the very popular Holga toy cameras. I really have to say that it actually looks better! The two shots above were taken with the Composer Plastic Optic and the first one has an extraordinary glow from the shiny students arriving at the barn! The second image in the more subdued light combines the best of the Lensbaby selective focus and Holga plastic perfect imperfection. It is a picture of Philip Andrews, who coincidentally won the top prize at the workshop…a 10k scholarship from Nikon to continue his studies. Congrats Phillip!

The next weekend after the EAW I continued my travels with the Lensbaby Composer to the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire. It was peak foliage time, and I had a blast just driving around with my family and stopping for Composer Inspiration! Yes, big thanks to my Mom, Sister, and stepfather who patiently waited for me as I shot and stopped every 5 minutes! The first two shots were taken with the Zone Plate Optic and have that great zone plate glow. The next two shots were taken with the Plastic Optic and interpret the foliage in more Lensbabified way. I had a blast shooting with them both. If you shoot with any Plastic Toy cameras like the Holga, Diana, etc then getting the Plastic Optic for your new Lensbaby is a must! I also noticed that dirt and dust do show up in your image more frequently when using the Zone/Pinhole Optic. This is not a fault of the lens but a reality of using a lens with a small aperture. Remember the Zone plate is f/19 and the Pinhole f/177. If your Digital SLR has a dusty sensor and you shoot with an aperature of f/2.8 and then f/22 the dust WILL be more prevalent in the image you shot at f/22. That’s just the facts. So be careful when swapping your lensbaby optics and lenses on your DSLR and always have a little rocket blower in your bag.

Good times are ahead in the world of photography as Lensbaby just revamped their entire line of creative lenses for SLR cameras.  I’ve been a big fan of these quirky looking 50mm lenses that create a sweet spot of focus and selectively defocus the other areas.  They’ve been described as bringing a very dreamy and ethereal quality to your photos and because of their unique look they are always an ice breaker when shooting.

So when my friends at Lensbaby asked me to beta test their latest incarnation, The Composer, I was very excited and had no idea what to expect!  I received it right before my trip to the Oregon Coast.  Not only did Lensbaby create the new lens, The Composer, but they also revamped their entire line by adding the Optical Swap System to all their revised lenses.  Now one Lensbaby can have 4 different effects!  You can easily swap out the standard 2 element glass lens for a more dreamy 1 glass element, or 1 plastic element (more holga-esque), or a zone plate/pinhole element!  Ingenious idea!  The Composer that Lensbaby sent me only had the pinhole/zoneplate optical element, so that is what I’ll be focusing on in this article.  Also please be warned that I used a pre-production beta lens and things might still change by the time you buy yours!

The Composer, is and will be the easiest Lensbaby ever to use.  I have owned all the previous versions, and have demonstrated them to thousands of people at photo events.  It takes most people a week of constant Lensbaby use to get the hang of it.  When you first try a lensbaby it  can seem a bit like juggling while taking pictures, and no one really wants to juggle cameras!  However, the new Composer will eliminate all the intimidation of how to focus as it uses a simple ball and socket configuration to smoothly and selectively focus.  The previous versions, now called the Muse and the Control Freak really need the use of both of your hands to focus, while the Composer can be easily adjusted/focused with one hand by simply tilting the lens to the desired focus/defocus. I found the option to tighten the ball/socket to lock the angle position very helpful.  It’s just like the friction control on a ballhead, you can simply adjust the tension for your tilt.  A barrel focusing ring located at the front of the lens aids in fine-tuning the focus.

The zone plate/pinhole optical apertures are f/19 for the zone plate and f/177 for the pinhole.  For those of you unfamiliar with zoneplates, they look like a black and white bullseye targets.  A zone plate consists of a series of clear and dark concentric rings that have very specific diameters to create the chosen focal length.  These specific targets are shot on a clear based film and then placed over the hole that now becomes the lens.  In the Composer the zone plate/pinhole were placed in a shiftable turret making it quite easy to choose which one you wanted to shoot with by sliding the turret back and forth.  To be completely honest with you, I had The Composer for 4 days and mainly used the zone plate setting, which I found the most interesting and easiest to use.  Remember you are shooting with either f/19 or f/177 so your other choices are raising the ISO or lowering your shutter speeds in order to get the correct exposure.  Sunny days and tripods are a must for using the zone plate/pinhole element though I did find the zone plate shooting to be very hand holdable .  Also, the zone plate was easier to view the focusing in the viewfinder of the camera as it was letting in more light.  I usually set the Composer on infinity focus while shooting pinhole.  I was using a hand held meter for judging exposures though the in-camera meter in the Fuji S5 did pretty accurate job.

The first two images are of the Oregon State Hospital, where the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed.  Angus and I were given a hot tip that OSH was giving a one day only tour of the J ward, where most of the movie was filmed.  The Oregon State Hospital was built in 1883 and is in dire need of asbestos removal as well as other serious renovations.  The complete and total renovation of the J ward and OSH is to begin later this year and hopefully be complete in 2011.  The top image was taken with the pinhole setting on a tripod and the second image was hand held with the zone plate setting.  Notice the beautiful glow that emanates from most zone plate images.  The Diffraction of the highlights creates a very dreamlike look while still maintaining enough focus to make out details.  The pinhole looks sharp/soft and emulates a plastic lens look without the vignetting.  I personally do not like pinholes on SLR cameras.  I like hand made pinhole cameras or pinhole box cameras as there is usually a more imperfect look to them.  Heavy vignetting and bending verticals are usually what I like to see in imperfect pinholes.  Lensbaby creates a pretty perfect pinhole and I advise utilizing the long exposures that f/177 will give you as well as putting something strong in the foreground to heighten the pinhole effect. I found that the tilting or bending of the lensbaby with the pinhole/zoneplate element did not create any selective focus effects in the viewfinder, so I shot most of my images with it focused straight ahead.  I would like to further test this aspect as it would lead to a truly unique effect.

Besides the Fuji S5 with the Composer, the only other camera I had on this trip was the Wisner 4×5 camera.  So when we were led inside the Oregon State Hospital for the tour, I knew I’d be at a handicap shooting indoors at minimum f/19.  Just like any zone plate or pinhole, a tripod is necessary if you want to shoot indoors.  Outdoors, during the day, the Zoneplate Composer will make you incredibly happy as ordinary objects attain a certain glow.  The sunset Angus and I witnessed at Cannon Beach made my Top 5 Most Amazing Sunsets Ever list and I feel the essence of the memory was accurately captured by the zone plate Composer.

I reluctantly gave the Composer back to Lensbaby as they were preparing to bring it to the biggest photo trade show of the year, Photokina. I can’t wait to use it again as well as try the complete optical swap system. All the new Lensbabies, including the Composer, are due out in about 4 weeks. You can preorder and find out more information at Lensbaby.com or B&H Photo.

You know when you meet someone and right away it seems like you have been friends for years??
Are you sure we haven’t met before? You’re waiting for the deja vu to happen as you’ve chosen the same paths but were maybe a few steps to the left or to the right.
I knew I liked Matt Hill the first time we met a year ago, but when we finally sat down for some damn good bbq at Dinosaur before a night shoot, it all fell into place. In between bites of scrumpdiddlyumptious brisket and chicken that we washed down with dark beer, we bonded. Matt and I are both Photo Industry dudes who share a strong passion for being creative, especially at night. Matt had already blown both Nancy and I away with his Cut Paper Art, which starts out as a blank piece of white paper that he slices into amazing voyages of creativity. It is truly a complete process of discovery for him and yet very accessible for us. You can check him out “in action” here. His website showcases his weekly cut paper art journeys as well as his “On Creativity” podcasts in which he interviews other artists regarding their creative process. For some of us, it comes naturally, others struggle for inspiration. However, listening to Matt’s podcasts On Creativity have made me think and focus more on my photography; the patterns, the inspirations, and the desire that fuels me.
So after feeding our stomachs with bbq and souls with good conversation, we took our tripods and cameras out for a nightshoot. We started out at Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb at Riverside Park on the Upper West Side and then worked our way down to the familiar 69th St Transfer Bridge. Everything was fairly accessible on this May full moon and we had to stop ourselves from shooting by 1am. Matt got some pretty amazing B&W images using his Mamiya 7 camera with the beautiful 43mm lens. I really like the B&W image featured here, the movement of the clouds on top and the calm reflections of the water on the bottom of the image bring a moving calmness to the image.
I was using a Baby Graflex 2×3 camera for the first time at night and had film backs loaded up with color and black and white. My Baby G camera is a miniature version, using medium format film, of the famous Graflex Press cameras that Weegee and all the newsies used back in the 30′s-60′s.
These beautifully utilitarian cameras use 4×5 film and have very basic swing and tilt movements. The baby Graflex uses 6×7 and 6×9 medium format backs and mine is custom fit with an amazingly fast and sharp Rodenstock 90mm 2.8 lens. I hadn’t used it for a while and I was worried about focusing the camera in the dark of the night. In order to selectively focus with this camera you look through the graflok back, which is a 6×9 piece of glass surrounded by a pop up hood. I brought a loupe along to aid in viewing but I didn’t really need it. All I needed to do was use a bright flashlight to light up the area I wanted to focus on and then switch out the glass back for a b&w or color film back and voila! Image created! I was also using my ricoh grd which produced my winning picture of the night featured here, and a Voigtlander Bessa R with a 60 year old leica lens. Matt and I were also testing out our latest gear acquisitions, our Induro carbon fiber c214 tripods with the dm01 ballheads. Though not as silky smooth as a Gitzo, I do highly recommend the Induro line, which offers great value for the price. I especially like the DM01 ballhead, which is rated to hold 17lbs and is very simple and smooth to use.
To see more of Matt’s photos from the nightshoot click here
And more of mine can be seen here
See you in the night!

Most of you know that I work for the Marketing Department at B&H Photo and travel all over the country representing B&H at the various tradeshows and seminars. I try to take advantage of my free time by taking pictures and testing out the latest gear, but nothing prepared me for what I was going to experience at St. Augustine.

The show was at Florida’s First Coast Birding & Nature Festival and my objective was to promote B&H and hopefully sell a few binoculars and spotting scopes. I knew the basics of binoculars but had never really used a spotting scope before. A whole new world opened up to me, a world of viewing subjects hundreds of yards away! Instead of using the large lenses that you see on the sidelines of a sports game – a 500mm lens that costs at least $5000 – you can use a spotting scope that will get 2-10x closer! You also cut your cost at least in 1/2, but most importantly you cut the weight. A 500mm lens usually weighs about 8lbs and a large 85mm spotting scope usually weighs less than 4lbs.

There were plenty of bird watching opportunities as the festival took place outdoors at the St. Augustine Amphitheater which was right on the border of the Anastasia State Park. While setting up our table, a hawk flew about 20 feet above me with a flying fish in his claws. Cool! Of course I didn’t bring a 5oomm lens with me. In fact, the longest focal length I had was a Tamron 90mm Macro lens!

That did not deter me from going to the Alligator Farm & Zoological Park to check out their amazing rookery where hundreds of birds were yards away. I spoke with an avid nature photographer from Australia and he said this was the best rookery he had every been too. About 85 alligators lay below the colony of birds and actually protect the birds from other natural predators that would invade the nest. I had never seen so many alligators before in my life, from fast moving baby gators, white ones, and MAXIMO, a 15′ gator that is as old as me but weighs in at 1250lbs!

I do not think of myself as a nature photographer, however, I do consider myself an environmental photographer – shooting what’s around me – and for those 4 days in St Augustine I definitely saw birds everywhere…

Boy, did we have fun!

Awesome live music, Nuclear Tacos, Salt Lick, movie theaters that serve beer and food… basically everywhere you turned, there was something trendy and fun to do.
So I pulled out the SXSW ’06 photos to relive, recharge, and get ready! The images were taken with a recently acquired, high end, point and shoot, ‘no zoom’ camera called the Ricoh GRD.

The folder I found them under was titled Food and Fun in Austin. I kept coming back to this photo. This was the fourth, and last, shot of these roof-top hipsters I took. It was easy to shoot incognito with the little Ricoh. I can’t wait to hit the scene again.

Stay tuned and get ready for the best BBQ review to date: the Salt Lick.

I’m not a flower guy.
I just wanted to get that out of the way first!

Friday afternoons I get off work at 1pm. Do I go to the Armory Show to get inspired by amazing photos or do I go home to create some? Well, a good friend and fellow photographer, Andre Costantini (who works for Tamron), just happened to stop by. He lent me one of the best macro lenses ever made – Tamron Telephoto SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro Autofocus Lens.

When I got home, the diffused light in the house was looking good. The paper whites, or narcissus, that Nancy always plants at the beginning of the year were in full bloom. It was settled – Macro assignment!

I’ve always liked macro photography and all of those digital ‘point and shoot’ cameras do a damn good job with that little flower icon feature. However, nothing beats a dedicated macro lens on an SLR camera! With a macro lens you get a 1:1 ratio, or lifesize reproduction, of your subject matter. You can move in super close to your subject and really select your focus. I chose to compress the depth of field and limit my focus from 1-2 mm.

I love how the green stem in the distance of the first image becomes so delicate. I shot for over an hour, with the slightest adjustments in focus, producing totally different images. The Tamron Macro Lens really was a joy to work with and a whole new way to interpret the world. I’m gonna have to think really hard about giving it back to Andre!

Wait a minute, maybe I am a flower guy after all.

dang!