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Last week I got my hair cut. My hair­dress­er, like me, is an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er. We got talk­ing lens­es, and she said she had a Lens­ba­by but had no idea how to use it. She offered to lend it to me.

I said “Sure!” I’ve been curi­ous to try one out, to see what it could do, but not curi­ous enough to buy my own.

I did some exper­i­ment­ing. It’s not like any lens I’d used before; you focus with two fin­gers, and you can maneu­ver it so that you’ve got a sharp focal point, and the rest of the image is blurred—almost motion blurred, real­ly. It was inter­est­ing to use, but not some­thing I’d prob­a­bly buy for myself. Cer­tain­ly not at full price.

Then last night—Hallowe’en night, no less—I glanced out the win­dow as I was get­ting my stuff togeth­er for judo. After a day of unbro­ken clouds, I saw that the sun had bro­ken through, and was throw­ing gold­en light every­where. I raced upstairs with my cam­era (which still had the Lens­ba­by attached) and snapped the above pho­to, of the trees in my front yard.

I like it. I think it turned out pret­ty good.

Now I think I need to do some more learn­ing with the Lensbaby.

On the way home from Win­nipeg, I pulled over and snapped a few pho­tos of this pho­to­genic lit­tle creek.

I think this one might end up being a sub­mis­sion for McNal­ly Robin­son’s Man­i­to­ba by Man­i­to­ba pho­to book.