Marvin Lei - The Lensball Photography Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Refraction Photography and Creating Stunning Images

My name is Marvin Lei and I am a photographer and digital artist. I specialize in portraiture and lensball photography and have been practicing my art for the past ten years. I began shooting with lensball in 2017 and was fond of how creative you could get with the photos. I decided to challenge myself and took at least one image in every environment I shot in. There was a lot of trial and error, but the experience helped build my understanding of the final picture. In the past few years, I began hosting local portrait photo walks and editing tutorial sessions to help photographers in my area become more accustomed to capturing subjects and posing models. During this period, I also brought the lensball on location as a prop and it garnered a good amount of interest. Over time, I accumulated more and more questions on my methods of shooting and editing, which served as a foundation for this guide.

In this guide, I will cover how I shoot and the settings I use for all my lensball images. Quick disclosure: there is no right or wrong way to shoot with a lensball, or to shoot any photo for that matter. The images you capture are your art and you should follow what you believe makes a picture interesting or beautiful. I am just here to provide you with guidelines and hopefully inspire you to develop your own style. For the sake of this guide, I explored both nature and urban landscapes to illustrate the different techniques and lighting styles that can be used in these scenarios. I left some of the images unedited so you can see what I look for in an image before I post-process it. The original composition and the lighting make up the majority of the image. Most of my photos are taken at 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 70mm, as those are the most common focal lengths for photographers. This will also help you visualize which lens configuration would be the most helpful for a specific location or environment.

The topics covered in this book were garnered from my years of trial and error. These concepts are geared toward photographers who have a general understanding of photography and who also have an interest in exploring the different avenues to shooting with lensball. Even if you have many years of experience, you may find some tips helpful that you can bring to the table on your next shoot.

[CHAPTER 1]Physics and Properties

If you find yourself struggling with a creative block or want to experiment with something new, try taking a lensball with you the next time you go out to shoot. Ive seen a lot of people create amazing work with this tool, and in turn, it has changed the way I shoot and compose my images. Unlike any ordinary prop, the lensball has some key elements that make it very unique.

First, the lensball has very similar properties to a wide-angle lens. Placing the ball too close to a subject will provide a fish-eye look, whereas moving it away from a backdrop allows it to encapsulate a large canvas. Straight lines will appear curved the farther they are from the center of the crystal ball, an effect also known as barrel distortion (). Many photographers utilize this attribute to create a strong perspective on the center of the image as well as to keep all of the scene in sharp focus.

Figure 1.1

Barrel distortion can be visualized as straight parallel lines in the center of the image that curve outward as they move closer to the edges. This property places more emphasis on the middle of the composition. Barrell distortion commonly occurs with the use of wide-angle lenses and can be easily rectified in post-production with Lens Correction settings.