Canon 7D, Canon 24-105 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/125 sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100

This is Lissa, photographed in St. George at an iStockphoto event … the same dancer I posted in an earlier blog post. She was doing some stretching before we started and I was standing nearby, so I got this quick shot of her before she changed positions. :)

Click on the image to view full-size
Canon 7D, Lensbaby Composer, Double Glass Optic
LEFT: 1/400 sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100
RIGHT: 1/160 sec w/ Star aperture, ISO 100

Everyone knows that the Lensbaby can create beautiful blur, but did you also know that they can be really sharp, too? I will admit that takes some practice to get tack-sharp in-focus shots every time, but I thought it would be good to show you guys that yes … it can be done.

I try to use my Lensbaby often, and I’m getting to the point where I can focus pretty quickly and accurately … well, I at least get it close. :) Whenever I achieve the level of sharpness like the images above it reminds me of the potential of that little lens. I plan on integrating my Lensbaby into my photo-shoots much more frequently in the near future, especially with my stock and food images.

The images above are a cropped-in area of the full-res file when viewed at 100% to show the level of sharpness that can be achieved with the Lensbaby Composer & Double Glass optic. They are both only very lightly edited using Adobe Lightroom, and no sharpening was added to either images.

Canon 7D, Lensbaby Composer, Double-Glass Optic, 1/400 sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100

Nicole shows how to do basic masking using Photoshop.

Click here to view the YouTube version of this tutorial.

Yesterday I hit another personal milestone on iStock—this photo was my 40,000th download! I was excited that it was this image … the little girl in this image is one of my earlier models and is also one of my very best sellers.

It still amazes me that in less than four years I went from making a few bucks a month on iStock to fully supporting myself with my photography. Who knew! When I was a kid I never thought it would be possible to actually make a living doing photography … times have definitely changed and I’m so happy to be doing what I love.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/100 sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100

This is another image taken at the recent iStock event in St. George. We had a pretty good-sized group of people in this room, about 8 or 9 models altogether, and my philosophy with setting up images when we have that many people is to use them all. So for this shot I positioned them all in the frame and used a long focal length to compress it to make it look like the entire room was filled with people. It’s one of my favorite shots from the event … really simple, yet has a lot of potential uses for designers.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/20th sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100

This past weekend I was in St. George for the iStockphoto event “Red Rockalypse 5″. The event was organized by a contributor, A.J. Rich, and he hired models and found locations for me and the other 28 photographers to use to create stock images for our portfolios on iStock. RR5 was my 6th iStock event and I honestly have to say that it was one of the best. It was a blast to spend time with so many awesome iStock photographers … plus I got some great images and that’s always a good thing.

The two models in this image are Rich Legg’s daughters, Sarah and Lissa. They’re both wonderful models and I had a lot of fun photographing them at this location … Lissa decided to make a face and I, of course, took a picture. This one’s a keeper, for sure. :)