Portland, OR—Lensbaby unveiled the winners of the recent challenge the company posed to its community—to come up with a new shape for their Creative Aperture kit. Lensbaby photographers from around the world took action and submitted their best images taken with a Lensbaby lens and a homemade aperture disk for a chance to win a place in the new kit.
Five photographers were selected, and the grand prize winner, with the winning photo showcased on the product packaging, is Troy Eiffert from Kalona, Iowa. Ivan DeWolf, Jerrid Jones, Andrew Kua and Bjorn Rannestad were also chosen and will have their creative aperture design produced and added to the new kit as well.
Troy Eiffert’s winning photograph is a perfect example of using an aperture shape as texture, and how it can add a striking element to a photo. “I created the slots aperture to achieve a vertical, horizontal or diagonal painterly effect depending on how it was placed in my Lensbaby Composer,” said Eiffert. “This is by far my favorite and most versatile aperture I have cut from the blank disks.”
Lensbaby Creative Aperture disks allow users to custom cut shapes onto blank aperture disks in order to add unique one-of-a-kind effects to their photos. These disks allow specular highlights (bright points of light in a photo, like street lights or bright sunlight on a lake) in the out-of-focus area of a photo to take on the shape of the hole on the aperture disk. By using an Xacto knife or craft hole punch, photographers can create a multitude of shapes. The aperture disks are compatible with the Muse, Composer, Control Freak, Lensbaby 2.0 and Lensbaby 3G lenses and with the double glass, single glass, plastic and soft focus optics.
The Lensbaby Creative Aperture Kit 2 will feature nine disks, including an additional four shapes envisioned by Lensbaby staff. The kit will be available by the holidays for an MSRP of $14.95. Lensbaby Creative Aperture blanks will remain available for enterprising photographers to cut their own shapes ($9.95).
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