A New Day, A Different Way The creative and photographic endeavours of a woman trying to add color and beauty to her world.

It seems like I have been waiting so long for the spring blossoms.  I would say we are about three weeks behind the usual time for our trees to bloom but finally it is starting.  I love the magnolia blossoms in particular, they don't last long but they are so insanely beautiful and there are so many of them around.  So this last weekend I went out and shot a few close ups of a couple different kinds of magnolia blossoms.  Here are a few of my favorites.

I recently picked up a Lensbaby "Muse" lens for my camera.  Lensbaby lenses are purposely made to create distortion in your photos.  I really thought it would be quite simple to use but...not quite.  Mechanically it is simple but the first round of shots I took were all completely out of focus, there was no way I could pretend that it was the desired effect of the lens.  But as I got to play with it more I started to the get the feel for it.  The first three shots here are taken with the Lensbaby and the last three are taken with my regular 17.5-45mm lens just to show the difference. I really like the effect in the first shot but I think I still need some more practice.