A Lensbaby Photo Essay by Carey Martin

Photographer Carey Martin reached out to us with feedback that was too terrific not to share with our Lensbaby family. Below, find Carey's story and her incredible project "Lensbaby Horn."

Also, for full effect, make sure to play this song while you explore her photo essay!

Im so excited to share what a fantastic experience I had taking Carolines Lensbaby class at Clickinmoms.com very recently. She was absolutely amazing and so instrumental in helping us all find our own voice with these phenomenal lenses! I want to share my final submission from the class with you but I need to share a condensed background first.

I have spent my lifetime as a musician, classically trained since age 6, boarding school for the arts, and both a Bachelors and Masters degree in French Horn performance, performing worldwide, etc. Visual art was something I was told I could never do because "I was a musician". A few years ago I picked up a camera and started playing around with it, making better and better images as Ive grown and learned more, but all the while completely shutting out my deeply creative artistic side that has developed with music. It wasnt until seeing my world through these lenses that it dawned on me to connect the two, and wow, what a revelation!!

For our final submission, Caroline had us create a photographic essay. I chose to create a thematic essay showcasing the sound of a piece of music using the instrument featured as the photographic subject. This is my horn, all photographed with the Sweet 50, Edge 80, and Edge 50 with various combinations of macro converters or not. The piece of music is significant for me. Im a classically trained musician but in HS and college my eyes and ears were opened to the creativity of jazz which led me to play in jazz clubs occasionally in grad school. The freedom and creativity this form of music offered was so fun and inspiring, and I find that these lenses do the same thing for me visually. This is one of the first jazz horn pieces I ever heard so putting this all together in this way seemed perfect!

I hope you will enjoy this series. Im so grateful for what you are creating and cant wait to keep learning and growing with these lenses! I think they are never coming off my cameras!

-Carey Martin