I love the Lensbaby lenses and will pull out the Lensbaby Composer at every wedding to snag a couple of dreamy portraits and will often use it for a few special pics of the rings and details. For a long time now I have wanted to shoot an entire wedding with one as a pet project. What would possess me to use a selective focus (and manual focus) lens to shoot an entire wedding? First off, its a challenge. As photographers we generally do not push ourselves with our personal projects as much as we should. Many have taken up trying to use their cell phone camera but its still all automatic, although you can still work on composition and lighting. Using a Lensbaby on the other hand is all manual. Since the Lensbaby lenses have a small “sweet spot” of sharp focus and the rest has a unique type of blurring to it, focusing is a real challenge. Try holding a camera, adjusting a focus manually, while holding a flash off to the side with one hand and you can imagine how awkward it can be at times.

In talking to a friend of mine, Chris Diset, who also shoots weddings in southern California, we got to talking about our pet projects and when I told him I wanted to shoot an entire wedding with a Lensbaby, he immediately invited me to do it at the next wedding he was shooting.  This is why its great to make friends with other photographers, I would never have tried this for a client that was paying me to get the best images as I knew going into this project that my “keeper ratio” was going to be far below average. In the end, a little over 800 images were taken. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with a Lensbaby Composer. Most images were taken with the dual glass optic, many of those with the super wide angle attachment, and a handful were taken with the FishEye optic.

Without further ado, I present an Entire Wedding Shot with a Lensbaby.