For Christmas, my wife and I went to Ohio, to visit my daughter and her husband and her five children. It was a great time. We celebrated the Nativity with her church, and ate really well (as usual for most of us, I think, too well). While there, I got a few good images of the landscape, and put them through Filter Forge to get some artistic effects. Here are the results.
After Christmas, we traveled to Linthicum, Maryland (near Baltimore), to stay with my oldest daughter, her husband (an Orthodox priest), and their 9 children. Again, we had a great time, and the food was more than satisfying. (Now we have to get the sugary stuff out of our diets.) While there, I used the Lensbaby Spark lens to capture the kids, and my wife and my daughter talking. I was very pleased with the results. These are two of my granddaughters.
My wife and my daughter became engaged in conversation. I saw my opportunity to create something. The Spark lens can be manipulated to put the focus where you want, to a large extent. The black-and-white, toned treatment made for a more striking set of images, with some development.
One of my granddaughters had a very animated expression, which worked well with this lens and its controlled focus area.
I will continue to explore the possibilities with different lenses, different lighting set-ups, different post-processing treatments, and even photo manipulation, to create something that moves the viewer, I hope, even when he or she does not know why.