The Day a Lensbaby Lens Turned Me Into a Creative Firework

Dear light chasers,

Before I ever touched a Lensbaby lens, I saw pictures made with one.

Someone had used a Lensbaby Velvet, and the images stopped me cold. They looked more like paintings than photographs — soft, luminous, dreamy in a way that felt intentional rather than accidental. Something about them pulled at me. Not because I wanted to recreate those exact images, but because they pointed toward a world I hadn't been able to reach yet. A way of seeing that felt closer to how I actually experienced beauty — felt, rather than captured.

I didn't know how to get there. I just knew those lenses might be the gate.

San Antonio, 2015

I flew into San Antonio for my first photography conference — ClickAway — not knowing a single person there. My confidence was shaky. I loved photography deeply but still held the word "artist" at arm's length, unsure I had earned it.

That weekend cracked something open. I found myself surrounded by people who spoke the same creative language — women who loved light and story and feeling, just like I did. Nobody was competing. Everyone was connecting. For the first time, I felt like my photography belonged somewhere.

And then I found the Lensbaby stand.

They were offering loaner lenses for the day. I was lucky — I got a Composer Pro with a Sweet 50 optic. I headed out on a photowalk, excited in a way I hadn't felt in a long time.

ClickAway 2015. Neither of us knew what we were doing. That was exactly the point.

The Photowalk That Changed Everything

The Composer Pro has a movable housing. You tilt it with your hand to shift the focal point — a small spot of sharpness surrounded by soft, swirling bokeh. The first time I moved it, I thought: this feels like a toy. Not a serious photographer's tool. A toy.

And that was exactly the point.

Something unlocked in me that day. The playfulness of it, the way it rewarded exploration over precision — it freed me from a kind of seriousness I hadn't even realized I was carrying. Suddenly everything looked like a photograph worth taking. I was seeing differently. Feeling differently.

At one point I started approaching strangers on the street to ask for their portraits. For anyone who knew me then, that detail says everything. I was quiet. Reserved. That kind of directness was completely out of character.

But the lens had turned me into a creative firework. I was exploding with ideas, with energy, with a joy I hadn't felt behind the camera before. By the end of the day I knew I had to buy it. I didn't even hesitate.

What Came After

That photowalk was the beginning of a much longer journey with Lensbaby lenses. Over the years that followed, the work I made with them started attracting attention. Other photographers noticed. Connections formed. Eventually I became a Lensbaby ambassador and spent several years as a beta tester for the brand — trying new products before they launched, giving feedback, staying close to the creative edge of what these lenses could do.

I eventually moved on from that program. But the lenses never lost their place.

More than any gear I've ever used, Lensbaby helped me find my voice as a creative person. Not by teaching me a technique, but by giving me permission to stop correcting myself. Blur, imperfection, abstraction — they weren't problems to solve. They were ways of speaking a visual truth I had been holding back for years.

That's still what I come back to. That's still what I teach.

If you want to understand the technical side of the Lensbaby Optic Swap System — how each optic works, when to use it, what to expect — I've written a full guide. You can read the full story here. But this post is about something else. It's about what happens when a piece of gear changes not just your images, but the way you see yourself.

Sometimes that's the whole story.

Always towards the light,

Ute