Keep on Burning, photo by Harold Davis. Click to view this photo larger.

A reader writes:

I like some of your lens baby shots, but you are getting carried away again! The Lens Baby thing is a trendy gimmick. Please get back to normal photography.

Not since my Iris photos have I head so much feedback from readers–both pro and con–on a group of my photos. It’s true that I do tend to worry a photographic theme and obsess over it–but unlike the Irises or the Figs, the Lens Baby is a piece of hardware rather than specific subject matter such as a kind of flower.

A piece of hardware is a tool. In the hands of an artist, a new tool can be inspiring, fun, playful, and lead to different ways of looking things. Which is what photography is really about: new ways of seeing our world.

Sure, there’s photographic life beyond Lens Babies, and a Lens Baby is far from appropriate for use in every photograph or every situation. Like any tool, there is a place for my Lens Baby–and places where the Lens Baby should not go. “Worrying” a tool to obsession is a way to learn about good places and bad places for the tool, just like photographing a specific subject in many ways is a way to learn about the subject.

What do you think? Have I gone overboard with my Lens Baby and its macro lenses?

Meta information: Nikon D70, Lensbaby 2.0, no aperture ring, +14 macro filters, ISO 200, 1/200 second, dark blue contrast gradients added to the perimeter of the photo in Photoshop.