Thanks to some critical feedback, I'm now happy enough with this version to post (I forgot to post it last night). I took this earlier in the week and it had too much going on with too many brushes and different lighting and DoF. By cropping to a square, it gives the triangle shaped brush more of a center-stage which is what I had hoped to do originally. I upped the contrast a little as well and cloned out a few stray brush straws that were annoying in the background. I'm beginning to enjoy the lensbaby and 'finding my legs' in terms of what type of images I'm interested in creating. Still a long way to go, though! Thanks for your continued kind comments about my attempts!
You are getting very good at finding just the right sweet spot and blur. I've decided I need new glasses as I can't seem to get the hang of finding the focal point.
Am happy your happy w/ the lb- personally I like the lb when they create more blur otherwise I'll just shoot w/ regular lens if I want sharpness- love the shot btw:)
The DOFand composition of this shot is spot-on to concentrate the eye on the colours first-up and then to the delightfully differing textures of the various brushes. I'd reckon you're definitely getting the hang of that lensbaby. Fav for me.
Personally, I hardly ever crop Lensbaby pictures, as I feel the natural blurring is part of the overall picture. But I have to say, this works very well as a cropped image. You ended up with a good result. We all work differently and to our own tastes, so keep up the good work!
@bankmann I know exactly what you mean. Cropping usually doesn't work as you lose the whole blur. This one had so many different levels of things going on it just needed to be simplified, but I suspect that's quite a rare situation. Thanks for the follow and the feedback! I'm enjoying learning from your album and your comments.
@ericdibosco Thanks Eric -- the critique group really helped a lot with this one. I'm swamped with a proposal and barely keeping up, so haven't been a good citizen on that!
