Tilt-shift Paradigm

Creating a nice looking tilt-shift is deceptively difficult.  I went up on the 7th floor balcony at One Waterfront Place and took a handful of shots using differing tilt angles and focus.  Results are spectacularly mediocre.

Not exactly a model town

In the continuing adventures of tilt-shift photography, I took a stab at shooting from the 7th floor balcony of One Waterfront Place.  The subject matter and the technique are both in need of improvement:

At least this looks like a tilt-shift image.

Meh.

Morning Buzz

I'm still experimenting with the Lensbaby Composer.  The Lensbaby web site has macro converters available, but I discovered that Canon's EF25 extension tube works quite well.  Here's an unadjusted picture of  Buzz Lightyear taken through the extension tube:

I had to take the tube off to get more Buzz in the picture:

Lensbaby Part 2

Took my lunchtime walk along the rail trail with Lensbaby in hand.  It isn't the nicest of days for outdoor photography, and I don't have anything notable to show for the effort.  So with that caveat, here's my nicest shot.

This is looking up Decker's Creek under the bridge on University Avenue, near the Waterfront Park.  I took it from the railroad bridge of the rail trail.

Lensbaby

Got a new toy to play with.  It's a  commercial tilt-shift lens called a Lensbaby Composer.  This particular model has been discontinued in the U.S., being replaced by the much more expensive Composer Pro.

I'm quite happy with the plain old Composer, thank you.  I think it's more than adequate for my needs and ability.  It comes with an assortment of apertures that you drop into place on top of the lens.  They are held in place magnetically.  The wider the aperture, the more pronounced the blur.

You shoot this thing in aperture priority mode, and the camera more or less sets the speed to 1/60 sec.  Here's a sample shot at f 2.8, using the built-in flash.