Trying Out Crystal Ball Refraction Photography

Happy Friday everyone! We made it to the end of the week! As this week comes to an end I wanted to take the time to share something new that I tried this week with you. It’s called refraction photography, or what I like to call Crystal Ball Photography. Refraction photography is where you have a blurred out background and a crystal clear photo in a glass (or crystal) ball, or water droplets. You can check out this video on it here, it explains what refraction is way better than I could on my own! A fellow photographer that I work with occasionally had gifted me my own glass sphere so I could start taking pictures with one, and the other day I went out and tried taking pictures with it! I already learned a lot from trying it out just one time!

One thing I learned is that you need the right lens for it. I used my Sony camera that I typically use for videos, but it's smaller than my Canons so it seemed more ideal to throw in my car and to use on my lunch at work. It has a pretty basic lens on it but I have learned you either want a macro lens for best results.

The new experiences don't end there though! I also decided to test out using Photoshop to edit the photos I took too! I want to make the transition from editing my photos on Lightroom to Photoshop, so I am going to need all of the practice I can get! And since this isn't the first time I have tried out Photoshop recently, I wasn’t too disappointed in my results. In the colored photo I edited, I love how the colors turned out. And with my sepia photo, this is my first time trying to edit photos like this. Even though it wasn't what I had in mind, I think it gets its point across and I'm still pleased with my work.

One of my favorite things about photography is that you're never done learning. There's so many different styles of taking photos. And at least twice as many ways to edit your photos too! It's so fun getting out there and trying new things.