Make a Wish

A few days ago, armed with my Composer Pro with Sweet 35 Optic, I headed out to shoot for the February Lensbaby Blog Circle. (Each month, a group of Lensbaby photographers will be sharing stories as part of this Blog Circle. Follow along, and see the next person’s post at the end of each blog). I had a loose plan – that I changed – and then came up with a looser plan, which lead me to start my day of wandering & photographing at The Wishing Tree, along one of my old bike commute routes — it had been years since I’d checked it out. I was curious to see what people were wishing for these days.

Most of the wishes older than a year or two were muddied to the point of being illegible – or the ink had disappeared. But some of the newer ones stood out.

Many were kind, thoughtful, and hopeful – for themselves and others.

A few were not…but, perhaps that’s forgivable in the landscape of 2018.

A bit more about the lens I shot this little series with, and why: the Lensbaby Composer Pro is a manual focus tilt lens – it tilts on a ball and socket, kind of like a tripod head. You can put different optics into the body of the lens to get different effects at different focal lengths. I decided to shoot this scene with the Sweet 35 Optic for a few reasons. Sweet 35 will give your images this sweet spot of focus, surrounded by blur (you can control how large the area of focus is with aperture – and where in the frame you place it by the direction you tilt.)

I’ve been shooting at 35mm recently, for the first time in a very long time and have really been enjoying that classic film, street photography focal length. It’s usually a great length to “fit it all” in the frame as well. Plus – with so many wishes – the sweet spot of focus of this lens was the perfect way to draw the viewer’s eye.

Next up in the Lensbaby Blog Circle – founder, Janet Broughton!