Into The Mystic

Into The Mystic  Apologies if anyone else has previously borrowed Van Morrison’s song title to set the scene for a Lensbaby Velvet review.  No other three words seemed capable of rendering at once the transcendent meditation & lush sensuality that is the post-snap feast which the Lensbaby Velvet, the 28mm in my case, occasionally sets before the auteur of stasis, that specific, chosen, though still improbable instant which bears extended and repeated indulgences.  Yes, only occasionally.  If every nine months represents, as my persistently accomplishing son insists, a single percentage of one’s life to be utilized or wasted, I’m already sinking in the morass of half-past all, the worst part of which is discernibly failing eyesight.  This physical degradation forces me to take measures with manual focus lenses that I would have once considered wasteful of my precious moments, but which I now understand are the necessary investment I must make to catch a fleet yet captivating spec of time from amidst the tumult of a life’s view on existence.  Almost exclusively, I shoot fast and freehand despite knowing, in an absolute sense, that my eyes cannot be trusted to assure critical focus.  Annually my ophthalmologist reassures me, speaking in her half-truths, that I’m not going blind, while nudging up the strength of my prescriptions.  To fight the tendencies of my own slow senescence, I sway while shooting close subjects.  This is my tip for Lensbaby users:  frame your subject (or perhaps don’t if you’ll crop to frame in post in order to ensure your subject is in focus within some other frame you may intend), achieve your best focus, then do a little dance.  Sway in and out ever so slowly, clicking off shots as you move the lens fore and aft.  Take a dozen shots or more and expect one image to stand out if you’re fortunate, resonating and aligning with your own fallible memory of the moment you hoped to secure.  Hope, and oftentimes disappointment, are integral to the task.  A certain joy, a palpable success, intercedes often enough to be encouraging.  Conversely, for images taken at greater, if not infinite, distances, I set the focus, snap the shot, roll the focus ring right until I know it’s wrong, then start snapping away at the subject, objectifying it more or less hazily, as I spin the ring back toward the lemniscate while shuttering.  Simple stuff.  The critical bit with these lenses, at least for folks with less-than-ideal eyes, is to take a boat load of pictures and hope one is worth salvaging; throw the rest overboard without remorse, indifferent to the screams ringing your inmost ear, “pick me, pick me!”  My post production usually is, and in the case of the first two example shots was, minimal.  I live on a desert island surrounded by a warm sea, so life is routinely hazy.  In turn, I click “Auto Haze Removal” and memory approves that improvement more often than not.  Then I crop to adjust the framing, if necessary.  That’s it.  These images, their otherworld affirmation of this world, are created essentially in-camera and that is in large measure thanks to the Lensbaby lens.

As a post-script, let me be explicit: I’m aware the Precise & Exact crowd (among whom clamor for clarity my wife and eldest daughter), disdaining the joys of fuzz, blur, indeterminate edges, opportunely invasive bokeh, and suchlike, may see in my appreciation for the Velvet lenses simply an affirmation of my own diminishing grasp upon the visual.  No.  Life is blur, the rushing river never trod twice.  The properly Crisp may reveal a spare detail here or there, but Crisp is the abstraction whilst the pleasant mush of indeterminacy partakes of the experience of becoming within which we are enmeshed inextricably. Witnesses do appreciate Crisp photos in passing, but they linger, they linger, over the Velvet results, peering into their depths, seeking insights that barren precision never tempts withal. 

PPS – There is, on some other hand, the clear and distinct possibility that that Lensbaby fans are not, individually, auteurs of stasis, but fall under that title collectively, a hive mind of sorts: THE Auteur of Stasis, variably, mutantly, instantiated within the unfolding of some Whiteheadian process that we, having no other, term Reality.  I’ve arrived late, but have no intent to leave until my time is spent.  Life is pleasant, and more than a bit mystic, when appreciated through these lenses.