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The Mission
Use a glass ball
prop to put a fresh
spin on landscapesTime needed
10 minutesSkill level
BeginnerKit needed- Kit lens
- A glass ball
Get out and have a
photographic ball
Dan Mold turns a classic landscape on its head by encapsulating
surrounding scenery in a spherical glass focal point
his month we’re taking
you through the
looking glass by
showing you a fresh
way to shoot landscapes.
I’m sure plenty of you are like me
and love to shoot in the great
outdoors, but there are only so
many ways to shoot landscapes
traditionally. But with a clear
glass ball, from companies such as
Lensball, you can unlock new and
exciting ways to shoot vistas.
Due to physics, when you take
an image of a glass ball, thelandscape inside of it will be
flipped upside down. Back at your
computer you can choose to leave
it as it is, and flip the entire
picture upside down by going to
Image>Image Rotation>180º in
Photoshop. Or you could select the
circular image inside the ball and
rotate just that by 180º, that way
both the ball and landscape
behind it are in the correct
orientation. The latter looks
very striking and we’ll go into
a detailed step-by-step method
on the following page.You can do this technique with
basic kit, providing you have a
glass ball. You just need a Canon
DSLR or mirrorless camera with a
kit lens. You can use a tripod if
you like, but this isn’t essential.
With your kit lens attached you
can either shoot at the wide 18mm
end and get really close to the ball
to capture the surrounding
scenery better (like we have
above), or you can go further back
and zoom in to the 55mm end,
which will make it easier to
blur the background out.T