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LensBaby Challenge: your very best two images

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
If you're looking for a soft focus look. It's not really what I wanted though.

Ben,

I really don't know what a "soft focus look: really is. I do recognize pictures where soft focus, like HDR or super-saturation is a gimmick. So let's exclude these obvious uses. Let's also contemplate the proposal that uniform lighting and sharp focus, a rigorous documentary style in police work, is hardly a requirement for great photography for social or artistic purposes. Here, allocation of importance is what is being accomplished by an array of techniques we have at our disposal. Just one of them is varied focus. That's where the lensbaby is so useful, adaptable and valued.

There's all sorts of "soft focus". With the classic Large format camera lens, some have perfectly sharp focus with just the periphery in subtle defocus. Other times there's an addition of glow, as from an "angel's brush", to the highlights in the sharply focussed subject. When one uses such techniques expertly and with careful forethought, it's easy to get taken away by the beauty imparted.

Asher
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
I'm sure I replied to that last post but can't see it now...

Basically a soft focus lens or filter gives an overall uniform soft effect to an image with or without glow. The problem is that it's uniform across the frame. Not that it's a problem if that is what you want but it's not what I wanted for my project although I did investigate a softar 1 filter at first when I was searching for a 'look'. The uniformity though is what put me off in the end.
 
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