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Lensbaby: An Interview With Inventor Craig Strong

Necessity is the mother of invention. Nothing was more true than this in the case of photographer Craig Strong. Craig was looking for ways to make his digital images as close and authentic to film as possible. Through experimentation with lenses and a shopvac hose, Craig came up with the Lensbaby.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Craig. If you don't know what a Lensbaby is or does, In a nutshell, it is a lens which allows for creative selective focus and blurring. To read more about it, check out the website, Lensbaby. Following is the interview with Craig:

How did you get started in photography and what is your area of expertise?

I got started in photography when my father gave me a camera when I was 13 years old. I immediately assumed the identity of "photographer". My area of expertise is documentary photography. I learned to recognize potential moments and be ready when they happened while working at newspapers under tight deadlines. I rarely had the luxury of missing a moment and waiting for another to occur before I had to leave for another assignment or return to the office on deadline.

How did you market yourself?

Most of my marketing for my commercial and editorial work has been personal contact with editors and designers that has resulted in long-term relationships working for them and receiving referrals.. Much of my marketing for my wedding work has come from referrals from previous wedding clients, placing ads online and in magazines and, most importantly having a relevant website with wedding galleries of weddings that I enjoyed photographing.

How and why did you come up with the Lensbaby?

I came up with the Lensbaby after buying my first digital SLR and quickly becoming frustrated with the often sterile and inorganic feel of my digitally captured images. I invested in my own education to learn how to make my digitally captured images feel authentic in the ways that we have come to recognize great photographic art. This included adding film-like grain and working to ensure that the digital contrast curve was tweaked to replicate the contrast of film prior to showing any images to my clients. At the same time, partly due to my newfound freedom to try new things without having to pay for film and processing, I was experimenting with lenses that were never intended to be used on SLR cameras. I started playing with video conversion lenses, then moved to modifying old lenses off of 120 folding cameras and other old cameras that I purchased off of eBay. My first Lensbaby was a 101mm Kodak Ektar lens that I removed from my Speed Graphic view camera mounted on a length of shopvac hose sticking out of a hole in an SLR body cap.

Can you describe the process of developing and mass producing your product?

I came to the table with no knowledge of how to manufacture a product. The learning process was very painful mentally because I thought very small, looking for existing components, such as shopvac hose, body caps and old camera lenses to combine in order to make my product. The process continues to be painful in that I am always having to problem solve the designs and production methods required to best make our products. I have never appreciated the term "paradigm shift" as much as I do now, after having experienced so many through the process of developing our Lensbaby products. All of the Lensbabies are assembled in at our headquarters in Portland, Oregon. We have a great group of people who work very hard to ensure that the products are of the highest quality. We have learned a lot together about how to improve efficiency and maintain quality. Every day we have fun making babies!

How did you market the Lensbaby? Which method of advertising proved to be the most effective and why?

We started out selling Lensbabies directly to customers through Lensbabies.com and through tradeshows. We launched at WPPI in February 2004, and that was a crazy, wonderful experience. The first day we sold a dozen Lensbabies, the second day 80, and the third day, after we got a huge plug from Parker Pfister, the booth was mobbed. We sold out completely. We learned though our tradeshow experiences that the single best way to sell a Lensbaby is to get one in a photographer's hands. When a photographer sees what they can do with the Lensbaby, and how much fun they are to use, the lenses pretty much sell themselves.

The most cost effective advertising we have done has been with Google keyword ads. These ads drive a lot of traffic to Lensbabies.com, and the website does a pretty good job of showing people what the lens can do. Our customers either purchase directly from us online or they go try out the lens at one of our growing list of retail stores and buy it there.

One thing I'd like to emphasize here is that we have always tried to avoid hyping Lensbabies. The Lensbaby could be an easy product to over sell, but we have always thought that it was more important to treat our potential customers with respect, and rather than hype Lensbabies, we have just tried to show photographers what the lenses do and let people decide for themselves.

At what point did the Lensbaby concept take off for you?

The Lensbaby concept took off after bringing on a talented business partner with a strong business background. Sam Pardue developed the marketing for the products that I have been privileged to create for our many loyal customers.

What advice do you have for the average photographer trying to create a name for him/herself?

Ask yourself these questions:

What is important to me?

What do I see?

How do I see it?

Each person has a very unique world view based on their values and life experiences. Knowing what it is that makes a photograph great is important. However, this knowledge alone will result in images that fall short of a truly unique vision. In my experience, truly great imagery comes from discovering what it is important and how that plays out in ways that can be photographed, You need to ask yourself how you can translate the way you see the aspects of life which are valuable to you into compelling photographs that convey your personal vision of the world around you.

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