Exploring the wonders of creation through a 50mm lens...and other lenses too.

One thing I have come to realize about myself as a photographer, or rather, the kinds of photos I enjoy taking, is that close-ups of things involving water are really cool. Some of my favorite shots over the years were captured after a nice heavy rain when the earth is coated in a high-gloss shine that lets things gleam and glisten in a way that they just can’t do otherwise. Earlier this year I did a whole series of posts that featured photos I took at the local botanic garden one rainy spring morning, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of taking these kinds of pictures. Of course I also hope to continue learning and growing as a photographer, branching out into new areas and trying new things so I can keep exploring areas of this art but at the end of the day, there’s a simple logic to why I keep taking macro photos on a rainy day: I enjoy it. And as Brian Shea so eloquently put it, Joy is reason enough.

The last time I got a photo like this, it wasn’t one single image but about a dozen that were stacked together. It’s interesting going back and reading my post about that single drop, because I said something that I’m not sure I entirely agree with:

the only way I could get the image I was going for was to just combine lots of exposures together.

As James Rebhorn’s character said in Independence Day, that’s not entirely accurate. One way, of course, is to use a large aperture and take lots of photos and stack them together. But another way is, well, to use a small aperture and take a single photo. The resulting images will differ in some key aspects, notably the out-of-focus areas (note how the 2023 image has a dreamlike quality to it, with all but the water drop being out of focus) but the single drop of water being sharp and in focus is very much present in this week’s photo despite being one single exposure instead of many stacked together.

I shot this at f/22, 1/200 second, ISO 1250, and I’m super happy with how it turned out. I’m particularly pleased with the subtle details lik ethe texture of the leaf, the handful of tiny water drops that are both in and out of focus, and the blurry background with sparkles shining like Christmas lights. I don’t know what kind of plant this is, but the way the leaf structure creates a surface that resists water and, as a result, causes drops to form large pools like what you see here…it’s just really cool. (Pardon my notable ineloquence, if you will. I’m just a blogger.) I’m planning to return to this spot in the coming months to see if I can get more like this, if for no other reason than I enjoy it. And that’s all the reason I need.

Over all the years I have been actively and intentionally photographing the world around me, as opposed to casual snapshots without much thought behind them (which should not be misconstrued as an implication that such pictures are inherently devoid of meaning and purpose) there are two things I keep coming back to that need to be in place for me to take a good picture:

1. I need to have my camera with me. Preferably one of my DSLRs, but any camera will do.
2. I need to actively seek out photo opportunities.

Other things help, for sure, but without those two things in place it’s not likely I’ll get much in the way of a good photograph. Or any photograph at all, if I don’t have a camera.

That, then, offers a bit of background, or perhaps context, for today’s photo. When I left for work on the morning I saw this scene I saw my camera sitting on the table and thought to myself “Do I really want to take the camera today?” A few reasons to answer with “No” included the usual slate of excuses:

1. The camera is too big and heavy
2. I might drop it
3. I don’t really want to today. Maybe tomorrow.

None of these, obviously, have much in the way of substance. And while it’s possible that I won’t get a good photo if I have my camera, it is not possible to get a good photo, or any photo, if I do not have my camera. So, being fresh out of excuses, I grabbed my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, stuffed it into my bag, and headed out the door.

The sun was already up, but not by much, by the time I parked the car and walked a few blocks through campus to get to my building. Since I had my camera with me, I was actively looking for photo and not 30 seconds after leaving my vehicle I saw this scene:

Nothing special, right? Just a tree in front of the Business School building. Not so! It was actually an chance to take an interesting picture: the sunlight behind me, the green and brown leaf in front of me, and the lights on the building in the background, all combined to create an interesting, and quite fleeting, opportunity of which I was able to take advantage because I had my camera with me and was looking for interesting scenes to photograph.

A few clicks of the shutter later and I was back on my way down the sidewalk heading to my building, but with a fun image that I was glad to be able to capture.

Well folks, here it is. This is, and I mean this without any exaggeration and with all possible sincerity, the best shot of a bee I have ever taken. It’s the kind of picture I have been trying to get for years. This quest, you might say, say back in June of 2024 I got a picture of a bee going in for some nectar from a magnolia flower near my office on the OSU campus. I since snagged others like this one but never quite got what I was hoping for, which is a profile shot of a bee hovering near a flower. Not a butterfly, not a hummingbird…a bee, bumble or otherwise, about to have itself a snack while simultaneously picking up some pollen. The thing about this kind of shot is you can’t really plan it or create it. You just have to be in the right situation, with the right gear and, most importantly, a healthy dose of patience and preparedness…and hope something comes along.

And every once in a while, it does :)

Ironically, I guess you could say, I wasn’t even trying to take this picture. It was a pretty normal afternoon following a morning of light storms, and I went out for a walk while on a short break at work. I had my camera in hand, thinking I might come across something interesting that would be good to photograph, and I happened upon these large purple plants with bright violet blossoms, many of which contained huge drops of water that had pooled during the rain. These subjects were entirely static, so I had more than enough time (measured in seconds, perhaps minutes, mind you. I was on a quick break! Not out for an hours-long leisurely stroll) to adjust my exposure, play around with my point of view, and fire off several clicks of the shutter. It was a thoughtful, kind of contemplative exercise that made me appreciate being outdoors in mild temps after the earth had washed itself clean.

And then I saw the bees. Many of them that were probably there all along but didn’t really catch my eye, flitting from flower to flower and pausing only a few breaths before heading to the next one. I tried to follow a few of them but that’s kind of an exercise in futility since they are so quick and nimble and there’s only so much you can do with a 105mm prime lens when trying to capture subjects like this. So instead I took kind of the opposite approach: I pointed my camera not at a bee but at a flower, hoping the former would come along and alight on the latter.

And by golly, as my dad would say, that’s just what happened. I had my exposure set to f/8, Auto ISO with 1/200 minimum shutter speed and I popped off a small burst of photos (continuous high-speed shooting on my D750 is something like 6 or maybe 7 frames per second, so make of that what you will) and one of them was, I am fortunate to say, just about right.

Everything about this image just works. The leaves fill the frame from top-left to bottom-right, while the flower in the center commands your attention the instant you see it. The bee is frozen in time except for its wings, which are a beautiful blur of motion as they keep it neatly positioned above its target so as to collect a bit of nourishment and pick up some pollen at the same time. The bee is sharp and in focus, its compound eye clear and unmistakable, and the angle of view draws you, the viewer, into the scene as if you were right there next to it.

I’m so happy with how this turned out, and yet still I am looking forward to what lies ahead. If I can do this once I can do it again, and who knows, maybe next time will be even better. Because in photography there’s always something new to learn, something fun to try, and some new horizons to explore if you’re willing to go for them.

When I was a kid my friends and I would spend entire recess periods in elementary school throwing these things, which we, and probably many others, affectionately termed helicopter seeds, up in the air and chase them down as they spun to the ground or even, if we were lucky, into our outstretched hands. It was super fun, especially on windy days, but something I just don’t see a lot of kids doing these days. Though that’s probably because where I live in Oklahoma we don’t really have many trees around that produce these kinds of seeds :) Every now and then you can find one though, like this one on the OSU campus near Theta Pond, and I was fortunate enough to come across this group of seeds on a cloudy, overcast day when the light was really good for this kind of picture. Almost too good, I might say, because the, uhm…wings? Rotors? Fins? I dunno what you call them, but the whirly-things on some of the seeds are just a bit too bright for my taste. Not a dealbreaker by any means, but maybe something that I could have at least mitigated by underexposing a bit and then bringing up the shadows in Lightroom. That’s pretty nitpicky though, and at the end of the day I’m really happy with how this turned out. So let’s just focus on that :)

I shot this at f/13 after trying various larger apertures because, you know, gotta get that sweet background blur, right? Well, not really, and this is a good example of why less (aperture) can be more (photo). The subject is separated from the background by such a great distance that I probably could have used a much smaller aperture and still gotten a good shot, with even more of the seeds in focus and the background would have still been a big green blur. No sweat. But, there was one consideration here that I don’t normally think about: ISO. I almost never think about ISO, since my full-frame Nikon D750, despite being over a decade old, produces great results even up to ISO 6400, but even so, at ISO 1800 I was starting to lose just a bit of the detail in the texture of the seed…extension thingeys. F/13 gave me a good combination of everything I care about in a shot like this, and I really like the foreground elements just barely intruding on the subject. It gives the viewer a sense that you’re peeking into a hidden world, uncovering some cool discovery that others might have missed entirely. At least, that’s what I hope you feel. Or maybe, if nothing else, you get the slight urge to pick up one of these seeds the next time you see it on the ground, toss it in the air, and marvel as it spins to the ground while you try to run and catch it.

For as long as I have owned DSLR cameras, all the way back to the good ol’ Nikon D200, I have enjoyed taking pictures of a few specific subjects around the same time each year. Crocus and magnolia flowers in spring, butterflies in the fall, squirrels and geese near Theta Pond…anyone who has been following Weekly Fifty for any length of time has no doubt seen pictures of such things and, hopefully, enjoyed looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them. Add to the list the seed pods of the Golden Raintree that you see here, which are fascinating on a normal day but particularly mesmerizing after a good soaking from above with cloudy, overcast skies casting even, diffused lighting as far as the eye can see. Such was the case way back in Summer 2013 with this picture, and these little balloonlike structures continue to be one of my favorite photography subjects today.

I saw this scene, the one featured above, while walking across the OSU campus with my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens the day after a mild thunderstorm blew through the area. Conditions were just about perfect for outdoor photography, and as I walked past this tree I could not help but stop and snap a couple shots with my camera. I went with a tried-and-true, simple-yet-effective rule-of-thirds setup here, with the main subject on the right and another seed pod in the background roughly along the left vertical. I shot this at f/6.7 to get a good combination of subject sharpness and background blur, though I think my go-to macro aperture of f/8 might have yielded better results…though probably not by much. (Read: I am very happy with how this turned out, and don’t mean to let my small nitpicks overshadow the rest of the image.) The rich, deep reds and bright yellows nicely complement each other, with the dark greens lending a sense of texture and context to the background.

It’s a good photo to be sure, but to really see what I like about it, and what makes it vault to very near the top of my favorite shots of golden raintree seeds, is the tiny, almost microscopic water droplets on the leaf in the foreground. If you don’t see them, I recommend clicking or tapping the shot so you can see the full-size original on Flickr, and then view it at the largest possible size. The minuscule drops clinging like velcro to the red vertical wall of the seed pod are something I almost never see, and even more rarely, take the time to notice or consider. Those drops encapsulate many things that I enjoy about taking close-up shots, and they serve as a good reminder to stop and ponder the world around me, and remember that there really are wonders of creation as far, or as close, as the eye can see.