Emerald Bay Photography News and Updates

Whoever said product photography had to be done in a studio, with a white seamless background and a ton of 500-watt lights?

Well, when the program chair of the High Desert Museum's upcoming Sagebrush Auction asked me to photograph some items for the western-themed event, I couldn't think of a better place to shoot them than in her own house (which happens to be a gorgeous log home I previously shot for an upcoming issue of Bend Living Magazine).





The August 13 auction is the Museum's single largest fundraising event and promises fabulous food, "frontier" fun, music, and live and silent auctions, featuring dozens of unique items (like the ones above). Proceeds from the Sagebrush Rendezvous support the Museum's educational programs that serve more than 12,000 children throughout Central Oregon.

So if you're a photographer or artist and would like to donate a print or two (tax write-off, folks!) to the auction, contact me, and I'll hook you up with the right person.

Labels: commercial photographer Bend Oregon, photography, product photographer Bend Oregon

Just recently, I've written about the Lensbaby. It's a little lens with a bellows for SLR (and dSLR) cameras that brings one area into sharp focus while creatively blurring the rest of the photograph.

Fresh off the Photography Blog RSS feed though, comes the announcement of Lensbaby 2.0.

Lensbabies Launches Lensbaby 2.0 for Brighter, Sharper, Faster Selective Focus Photography

March 21, 2005, Las Vegas, NV. Today at the WPPI trade show, Lensbabies launched Lensbaby 2.0, a second-generation selective focus SLR camera lens, bringing brighter, sharper, and faster selective focus photography to professional and avid amateur photographers.

"Lensbaby 2.0 has proven to be a wonderful creative tool for demanding photographic assignments. Compared to The Original Lensbaby, Lensbaby 2.0 has a greater range of aperture settings, a much sharper 'sweet spot' of focus, and a new levitating magnetic aperture system, which makes it a snap to change apertures," said Craig Strong, the inventor of the Lensbaby and Co-CEO of Lensbabies, LLC.

Lensbaby 2.0 and The Original Lensbaby bring one area of a photo into sharp focus, with that 'sweet spot' surrounded by graduated blur, glowing highlights, and subtle prismatic color distortions. Photographers can fluidly move the sharp area around the photo by bending the flexible lens tubing.

Lensbaby 2 features an f2.0 aperture setting, plus f2.8, f4.0, f5.6 and f8.0. Lensbaby 2 is available for sale now at http://www.lensbabies.com for $150.

Sounds like an improvement, but there's still no mention of the fact that you have to move the bellows around MANUALLY - which can be somewhat of a problem for dexteriously-challenged photographers. The price point however had me shudder. $150 for a tiny plastic lens? Come on ...

Labels: photography, photography gear