Crystal Ball Photography: Get Creative With Your Camera!

Glass ball photography is becoming more and more popular. Would you like to turn the world upside down? In this blog you will discover crystal ball photography tips for a creative snapshot!

Quartz crystal balls, irregular in their clarity and refraction, are mainly used for intuitive insights and mystical viewing. The glass ball, on the other hand, is perfectly clear and evenly refractive, and because of this it is perfect for taking photos. Photographers call this lensball photography or sometimes glass ball photography. The glass sphere functions as an extreme fish-eye lens that can make the world look upside down. This often results in nice pictures. Read on for glass ball photography tips to get the most out of this unique optic tool!

Glass Ball Photography

The glass ball is a transparent sphere with which you can take unique photos. If you hear someone talking about practicing photography through a crystal ball, they probably mean a glass one; real quartz crystal balls are rarely clear enough to photograph through. Whether you use an SLR camera or the camera of your phone for glass ball lens photography, you can be sure that your pictures will be creative and unusual!

At Spiru you can buy a lens ball in all kinds of sizes. Lens ball photography is also suitable for all kinds of photography: landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, or even portraits! There are endless ways to use a glass ball for photography. Whether you’re in your studio, out in the city, or on a nature hike, you’ll find great and inspiring subjects to photograph with this technique. Turn the world upside down, view the world through the glass sphere, or use it as a wide-angle lens.

Shooting with Glass Ball

When taking a creative photo with the lensball, you can go in all directions! The two basic ways of using it are to hold it or put it down. You can blur the background by focusing on the ball, but you can also choose to make the glass sphere part of the environment. Give your photo a fun twist by holding it in front of your camera lens and shooting through it. You can, of course, also put it in an interesting place. Make sure you have a stable surface, because you don’t want to damage your tool! In any case, the world will flip 180 degrees in the crystal ball. You can choose to flip the photo again in post-processing. Sometimes that gives a nice effect!

Different Sizes Photographing through Glass Ball

There are different types of glass balls. Before you start shooting with a glass ball, it’s good to know that you have the right size in your hands. Size is especially important when you work with these balls as a photographer rather than as a spiritual seer. The size of the glass sphere you should choose depends on what you want to do with it, because it affects the way your object is portrayed. For example, you could create a thumbnail view through a small ball lens. The glass balls and crystal balls are available in different sizes:

• 4 cm
• 5 cm
• 6 cm
• 8 cm
• 10 cm
• 15 cm
• 20 cm

As you can imagine, a 20cm sphere adds slightly more weight to your camera bag than a 4cm sphere. For this reason, many lens ball photographers choose to carry a sphere between 5 and 10 cm with them. The object comes into view well, but at the same time you don’t have a heavy marble in your pocket. They also fit better in one hand than the larger 20cm balls. If you would still like to get started with larger balls, then you can of course also opt for a ball of 15 or 20 cm, but you’ll probably need to place it down or on a standard more often. It’s just personal preference. Like any creative activity, rules are meant to be broken!

Chack Out All of Our Glass and Crystal Balls

Glass Ball Photography Tips

• Make sure the glass ball is as clean as possible and free of fingerprints. Dirt and fingerprints are difficult to remove with an editing program.
• Think carefully about where you put the crystal ball. If you place it on a ring or hard surface, there is a good chance that it will scratch. Coarse sand can also damage the glass.
• Start by looking for an interesting subject. To find out if the object is suitable for glass ball photography, you can hold the transparent ball in front of it for a while and look through it. It usually doesn’t take too long, because a glass ball inspires quite quickly!
• Then it’s time to shoot! You can use a standard, wide-angle, or macro lens. For an even bigger surprise, you could even screw a fisheye lens onto the camera. Start approximately in the middle with aperture 8. From there you can play with increasing or decreasing the aperture to make the background more or less sharp.
• Congratulations on your crystal ball photo! Once you’ve shot the perfect picture, it’s time to edit it. The object you photographed has been rotated 180 degrees. If you’ve chosen a sharp background, you could invert the photo again in post-processing if you like. Now the background is upside down. It takes some experimentation to get the feel for this, because not every photo is suitable for inversion. Sometimes it’s a nicer effect to rotate the image only if the background has remained out of focus.

Things to Watch Out For

A glass sphere works in much the same way as a magnifying glass. As soon as you hold it in your hand and the sun starts to shine through it, you could burn your hand. So watch out for direct sunlight! Also be careful when storing the glass lens. Don’t put it in a sunny spot or you could start a fire.

More Tips to Get Creative with Spiru

Did you enjoy this blog and do you want to get started yourself? Then as a real creative person you will certainly enjoy some other activities we have available. You can Make Your Own Jewelry with our wide range of beads and stringing material. You can use these materials while making your own personal Talisman too. Would you rather make something that you can use during meditation? Try experimenting with Blending our Loose Incense or try making Moon Water. Are you interested in spiritual art? Then check out our Spiritual Statues!

How do you get creative?