Emma Wood | Location Portraits with Burnside 35

Emma Wood & Burnside 35

Emma is a natural light, lifestyle photographer who likes to get to know her subjects and bring out their true personalities. To create these portraits of her daughter she really utilised the swirling bokeh and the vignette effect slider of the Burnside 35. The results are moody and exquisite!

I’ve been lucky enough to have owned my Lensbaby Burnside 35mm since February and as excited as I was to get my hands on one, I have to say, it’s completely surpassed my expectations. One of the things that has been unexpected, is how original it is from the rest of my Lensbabies. I’ve used it for a multitude of different environments and situations from landscape, to documentary and environmental portraiture, this really is a lens that covers many bases for me. But primarily as a fine art portraiture artist, I have to say, this is where it shines for me particularly.

The beauty of this lens, is that you can go from up close portraiture, to landscape images in an instant. The bokeh on the Burnside is absolutely beautiful and can easily switch from fairly subtle to more intense, depending on your depth of field and focus points.

I shot this portrait through leaves in the foreground just for fun, but you can see behind my daughter the swirling bokeh that the Burnside creates. I had the vignette slider dialled up to around 75% because I wanted to be able to focus on the subject and bring in those shadows.

The image below was the actual location of the portrait, she was standing right in front of this cute little archway of leaves. And by focusing on the hanging leaf in the foreground, you can see this amazing swirling bokeh that the lens creates, behind the focus point. Vignette was dialled in around the same amount as in the portrait image above, which brings in the focus nicely to the centre of the image.

Another thing that the Burnside copes with beautifully, is movement. Here you can see that there is a stillness to the portrait, whilst still incorporating beautiful movement and swirling bokeh to the background. I love how the softness and blur on the perimeters of the image really accentuate the focal point, or subject in this case.

And the Burnside makes everything look surreal and dreamy, whatever you focus on.

For this portrait, I wanted a more intense bokeh from the Burnside, so I made sure that the subject was standing quite a way from the background, I also positioned myself much closer to her. Again, you can see that the Burnside creates a real sense of stillness from the subject, in contrast to the dreamlike bokeh behind her. I love how it adds to the intensity and atmosphere, and it’s one of the things that I feel makes this lens so wonderful for portraiture.

This was the location of the portrait above. I focused on the leaves which were about half way between me and the background to create this more subtle bokeh.

I love how a different focus can completely change the feel of an image shot from exactly the same location.

All images shot with Burnside 35.

To find out more about Emma and her work, check out her website, Instagram and Facebook.