Surrender

By Joe Copalman

VIOLET VOODOO

I knocked out the workshop shots pretty quickly, then spent the rest of the evening goofing around with the Omni wands and filters. The color expansion kit comes with a variety of transparent colored filter strips, with a set of plain colored ones, a set of semi-mirrored ones, and a set of color-shift ones with a criss-cross pattern stamped on them for a quilted look, all of which can be swapped out into a small wand with a clamp on it. The Color Expansion Pack also comes with a pair of color-shift crystal wands, one in the shape of a teardrop and the other shaped like an almond.

DENTAL PROBLEMS

SEEING STARS

I went into the evening thinking I’d use the criss-cross and single-color strips and the ‘teardop’ crystal with my 24-105mm lens the most, but the combo that kind of blew my mind was the ‘almond’ wand – which I thought I’d hate – with my Lensbaby Composer with the Sweet 35 Optic mounted in it. What made that combo work well is that the front element of the Sweet 35 is 46mm versus 71mm on the 24-105, meaning the crystal could cover the entire front element on the Sweet 35, but not the 24-105.

DEVIL IN DISGUISE

RESCUE FORCE

You know how sometimes you’ll go to kiss your significant other with no intention of making out, but a few seconds into it, something changes and you hit that ‘surrender’ point where you both sort of exhale deeply, slacken your shoulders, lean into the kiss a bit more and just let it take you wherever the hell it’s gonna take you? That’s what shooting with this was like, minus the moaning and groping and such. It started out casually, and quickly became this fun, exciting thing I surrendered to.

DON’T DRINK THE KOOL-AID

Every time I go to Pima, I have a plan. I have a list of aircraft I want to shoot and angles I want to shoot them from, and I try to get as much knocked off that list as possible. Wandering around without a plan and shooting whatever looked like it might look good through that goofy-ass crystal felt so liberating. And what I loved about it was that with as much as a minor tilt or rotation of the crystal could alter the image, every photo I shot was captured via exploration and discovery, and pretty much none of it was repeatable.

ONE STEP BEYOND

WAVY GRAVY NAVY

One of my biggest complaints about aviation photography is that there’s this sort of oppressive parochialism that results in so many people getting the same shot, often with similar equipment and shot on similar or identical settings. I’ve tried to break away from that, and while I’ll be the first to admit that quirky gear can often end up being a crutch or a substitute for talent or vision, I never feel like that when I shoot with Lensbaby gear.

WACKYWING

SHARK ATTACK

Most of these images are close to as-shot, with the most common post-processing adjustments being setting the black and white points and kicking up the contrast a bit, as the crystal tended to wash things out a bit.

AMERICAN STRATEGERY

Standard caveat about knowing, accepting, and loving that this stuff isn’t everyone’s cup of tea applies, but I am not exaggerating when I say this was some of the most fun I have ever had with a camera.

ANCHORS AWAY

FLYING TIGERS

REARROWS

For those who had the patience and grace to get through all that, here are normal shots I took yesterday:

SHE BITES

HELOFRAMING

DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT STEPPING

DERRIAIRE

DANGERARSE

KONRADE GATLINGOV

DÉMON DE LA MER

NOSE-TO-TAIL

HOOKER TRAINER