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

Over Black Friday weekend I made a purchase that I had been saving for since the beginning of the year: a Nikon D500. I bought it specifically to get shots of my kids as they play sports, and in a way this camera choice is a tangible artifacts reminding me of how far my two boys have come in the past eight years. My wife and I bought our first DSLR because our little Panasonic pocket camera didn’t take great photos of our newborn son, and that Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8 lens immediately sent our photo quality into the stratosphere. Since then we have made other gear purchases because of the needs they met–not simply because they looked cool or we had money burning a hole in our pocket. That’s actually the number one question I ask people when they seek my advice on a camera: what problem do you want it to solve? Once you know that answer, you can start looking for a camera or lens or other piece of gear that will do the trick. Over the years as our kids grew we bought different cameras and lenses in order to better document their daily activities, with my favorite being the Fuji X100F that I have mentioned so many times here on Weekly Fifty. I realized when our oldest son started YMCA soccer in the spring of 2018 that I wanted another arrow in my photography quiver to take better pictures of him, and the answer to that gear question was the Nikon D500.

I wouldn’t say that this picture would be impossible on my other cameras, but it would have been a lot more tricky had I not used the D500. For one, I needed to get on eye level with this duck which was aided dramatically by the flip-out screen on the back of the camera. My D750 has that too, but the D500 has dramatically improved Live View autofocus which really came in handy here. Were it not for that I’m not sure that this photo would exist, which I guess goes to show that while better gear won’t make you a better photographer, it can help to a certain degree depending on what you need it to do. I slowly crept up to this duck and used Live View to focus on its eye, and was able to take one or two pictures before it got spooked and went on its merry way.

What lens did I use, though? None other than the humble little 50mm f/1.8 that I’ve had since the beginning. It’s the lens that got this blog started, and it’s still one of my favorite pieces of gear that I don’t plan on replacing any time soon.

My brother Phil came for a visit with his family a few months ago and while they were here I got kind of fascinated at his use of close-up filters. Any longtime reader of Weekly fifty knows that I’ve taken my fair share of macro shots using close-up filters, but that kind of photography sort of ebbs and flows with me. I’ll be super into it for a while and then move on to something else, but when Phil was here it was kind of inspiring watching him find ideas for shots where I would have never considered to look. Even just out in my front yard he was pointing his camera at leaves, bricks, mailboxes…almost like he was seeing it anew with fresh eyes, and even though all those things are part of my daily life I never really thought about them as potential photo subjects. Watching him was a fun reminder that yes, there really are interesting photo opportunities all around, which is a lesson I feel like I’m constantly re-learning as I continue to explore photography.

Since their visit I have been taking a bit of a renewed interest in close-up photography, and this is one example of the fruits of my camera-related labors. In mid November we had some rainy days here in Oklahoma, and since those are some of my favorite shooting conditions I thought I would bring my camera to work and see if I could get any shots if the opportunity presented itself. I had a shot just like this in mind, so as I was walking through the gardens I kept my eyes open for a drop of water on a leaf. That’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years–I find that inspiration comes more easily if I at least have some kind of basic concept in mind for a picture and then seek out ways to capture that shot, rather than just wandering around and waiting for something to strike my fancy.

This was taken in the formal gardens right in front of the student union as I was on my way back to the office after meeting with a faculty member. I had my D7100 and +10 filter because I knew that I would need to get super close to get a picture of a water droplet on a leaf, and it took a few tries but I eventually got one that I was happy with. The first few didn’t work out as well as I hoped, partly because I was using too wide of an aperture and also because the overall composition just wasn’t super compelling, but this one ended up almost exactly like how I pictured in my mind. I wanted to have a picture where the drop of water was centered with some color in the foreground and background, and what made this one work in particular was how the yellow leaf on which the drop is resign lends a sense of depth to the composition. I had some other shots where the leaf was sideways which made the image seem kind of flat and uninspiring, but this one turned out pretty well.

I have taken other shots like this one over the years (kind of like how I have also taken shots of magnolia seed pods) but as long as I’m learning something new and finding creative ways to explore this type of image then I feel satisfied in what I have accomplished.

So here’s something you might not know about me…I get really nervous when I go out and take pictures in public. It’s one reason you rarely see photos of people here on the blog, and it’s something I’ve been trying for years to overcome to varying degrees of success. I just feel kind of self-conscious when I’m using my DSLR (or even my phone camera) in a public setting, as if everyone is watching me and wondering why I’m taking pictures of such boring, mundane objects. And I really don’t feel comfortable taking photos of people public parks or gathering areas. It feels like I’m intruding on their own personal space, even if they’re just in the background of a picture I happen to be taking and not actually the subject of my photo at all.

I shot this picture on a rainy afternoon after I got off work and was waiting for my wife to meet me outside her office. There’s a covered walkway between two buildings on campus where we meet up after work sometimes, and she told me it would be just a few minutes so I grabbed my D7100 and 50mm lens from my bag and looked around for something to shoot. After a few seconds I found it, right in front of me: the railing at the edge of the walkway. I thought the rain on the black paint made an interesting texture, and the autumn colors beyond the railing were a neat mix of greens and oranges that I really liked.

I set my exposure (f/1.8, 1/250 second, Auto-ISO value of 180) and snapped a single photo…and heard a door open just to my left followed by footsteps heading my way. Normally I would have taken a few more pictures, adjusting the aperture to see what results I could get at f/2.8 or even f/4, and maybe changed my angle of view, but as soon as another person entered my peripheral vision I immediately put down my camera and stood up. I went from feeling creative to feeling awkward, even though to the other person I was probably not on their attention radar one iota. He probably didn’t care one bit that there was a person taking pictures of a railing. He almost certainly had other things on his mind, and some dude with a camera wasn’t even close to registering on the scale of things that mattered.

And yet…I still felt the need to stop everything for the sake of…what? I don’t honestly know. This doesn’t have anything to do with the picture, but I thought I’d share it here and I’m wondering if any of you feel a similar way.

As for the photo, I like that it almost feels like two pictures. First, the obvious: a rainy railing overlooking an autumn scene. But it also looks like the panes of a frosted glass window, which is due to the huge aperture (and, thus, very shallow depth of fiend) and it’s a look I didn’t anticipate when I took the photo but in hindsight I think is pretty cool.

I don’t like taking pictures that are basically carbon copies of earlier photos, but I do enjoy paying homage to previous photos by way of making images that are inspired by their forebears. The photographic pronoun to a visual antecedent, if you will. When I shot this picture (about three minutes before last week’s photo, as a matter of fact) I specifically had another shot on my mind which I took almost exactly three years earlier. What attracted me to the initial image from November 2016 was a sense of color and backlighting, and I liked the contrasting colors too. So when I came across a similar scene near Theta Pond I wanted to use some of my lessons I learned taking the earlier photo in what was, hopefully, some new and interesting ways.

First of all, the subject. The original had a wide blade of yellow grass slicing vertically through the image, and when I saw a yellow leaf doing kind of the same thing I thought it would make for a similarly interesting picture. The original image also has a heavy mix of subject and background colors, and as such I wanted the background to play a key role here as well. I stood on my tiptoes to get this shot, with the goal of getting the balls of light (which was sunlight being reflected off of car headlights on University Avenue) in just the right spot so as to complement the leaves. I don’t know that it entirely worked, and I did end up with one image that I think is better in terms of subject-and-background composition, but in that one the leaf was just a little out of focus. So in the Rejected pile it goes!

I wouldn’t say that this picture is better than the original, and in some ways I actually prefer the 2016 incarnation, but I was making a clear attempt to take a picture based on lessons learned from three years prior. Sometimes the things I do when taking a picture are quite unintentional, or perhaps more along the lines of muscle memory, but other times I specifically try to incorporate things I have picked up along the way. If it works, cool. If not, no big deal. I still got to use my camera, and that’s always a win :)

Just as I don’t usually take photos with specific days or times of the year in mind for posting, I also don’t usually take them with the intention of showing them together as a specific group. This changes from time to time, like when I did my series of sunset images last summer, but for the most part I just post pictures here on the blog in no particular order and with no real rhyme or reason. However, when I shot this image I thought it would serve well as somewhat of a companion piece to last week’s photo of a magnolia seed pod.

As often happens with my Weekly Fifty photos I was out on a short walk around Theta Pond on campus and I saw this husk resting on a stone ledge, having long since served its purpose of creating seeds for eventual dissemination. Magnolia flowers, and their resulting central pods, are really a sight to behold but I don’t often think of these remnants as being photogenic or noteworthy at all. However something about this rather unremarkable scene gave me pause, and I’m glad I stopped to investigate.

I had my D7100 and 50mm lens with me at the time, and after using that thing combination for over six years I think my only real complaint, in terms of daily photographic use, is that the rear screen doesn’t flip out. Most modern cameras offer this feature and while Nikon DSLRs aren’t exactly known for their prowess with Live View (that’s what their new mirrorless Z system is for!) it is useful to compose with the rear screen from time to time. And when that happens, a flip-out screen sure would be nice. Such was not the case here so I made do with what I had, and despite having to contort myself at kind of an awkward angle I think I got a pretty good shot nonetheless.

I shot this at f/1.8 because I wanted maximum background blur, and really I think that’s the standout feature of this picture: not the subject, but the background. It’s almost like the purpose of the subject is specifically to draw your eye to the greenery behind it, and that’s something I don’t often think about when composing photos. I tried a few shots at f/2.8 but it just didn’t give me that silky smooth look I was going for (unlike last week when I specifically chose f/2.8) and I actually did end up moving the seed pod just a bit so I could get that brown curled-up leaf in the shot as well.

In looking through some of my photos from Fall 2019 I realized I didn’t have too many of one of my favorite subjects, that of magnolia seed pods as they begin to constrict and force out the beautiful red seeds that lie within. I’ve posted several images of these seed pods over the years here on Weekly Fifty and maybe that’s why I wasn’t all that interested in taking more pictures of the same subject again. It felt like a been-there-done-that scenario, and I don’t want to shoot the same pictures of the same things over and over.

When I went out for a short walk around Theta Pond in mid November I certainly didn’t plan on taking a picture of yet another magnolia seed pod. In fact, most of the trees had long since shed their seeds which eliminated even the opportunity of getting the same type of picture I had gotten many times before. I had my D7100 and 50mm lens just in case I saw something interesting, and after some rather boring photos of geese wandering around I found this one single seed pod that had not yet fallen to the ground, and realized that I actually could make something interesting and new from a very familiar subject.

The thing I realized I could do to make this picture a bit more compelling, as opposed to just a bunch of red seeds sticking out of a brown husk, was to adjust my position (as well as the aperture of my lens) such that the background would be more than just blue sky or green leaves. Far above this seed was a cypress tree spreading a beautiful canopy of brown feathers across the sky, and I realized that was the key to the whole operation.

This seed pod was about ten feet in the air which meant I had to use Live View, and on a D7100 (remember, this camera came out in 2013) that’s not exactly a task that requires minimal patience. It’s slow, clunky, and choppy and forget about using a zoomed-in view to check focus. As such I decided to shoot at f/2.8 in order to get a little more room for error in terms of depth of field, which turned out to be a good thing because the shots at f/1.8 had a background that was just a giant brown blurry mess. It wasn’t pleasing to look at in the least, whereas the bokeh was rendered much more beautifully at f/2.8.

See those white parts on the left–the balls of blurry light that seem as if they frame the seed pod? Yeah, that was completely intentional on my part. After about a dozen shots I discovered that I could position myself in such a way as to make the seed pod show up between those highlights, as well as the one on the right, and the result is actually quite similar to my mockingbird picture from last week. A good picture isn’t just about the subject, but the other elements in the frame that serve to augment the image. That’s what I tried to do here and I think it worked pretty well.

As I mentioned in my photo commentary last week, I don’t usually schedule specific pictures for certain days just like my photo from last week I’m making an exception here. I didn’t take this picture so I could use it as the first image of 2020, but as I was looking through my image collection I thought it might be an appropriate way to ring in the new year. So here you go :)

I shot this back in the fall of 2019 in mid afternoon on a sunny day, and the composition was a bit different for me because of how the light hits the flower. Typically I don’t use backlighting very much but I thought it would work pretty well in this case, and think it makes the resulting image look a bit more interesting and dynamic as a result. If the sun were behind me it would have illuminated the entire flower evenly, but as such I like the white glow around the edge and, as a bonus, the fun highlights behind it in the background. Aperture selection on my 50mm lens here was a little tricky since I knew I wanted a nice blown-out background, but I also wanted the flower to be fully in focus and f/1.8 would have made this almost impossible. F/4 seemed like a bit too far the other way, so I compromised with f/3.3.

I think it worked out fairly well though I must say the background, while being bright and colorful, is a bit too busy and cluttered for my taste. In any case I hope this flower helps bring a smile and sense of optimism to you as you start 2020, and here’s to a year full of new life and new possibilities :)

Cheers!

First of all…Merry Christmas! I hope this day, and this season, finds you and your family happy and well, and may you be given peace and love as we celebrate the birth of Christ. John 3:16 says that “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, that whoever believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” How incredible to think that the baby born in a manger over two millennia ago, because there was no room for his family at the inn in Bethlehem, would one day be the savior of all mankind. Praise God for His saving grace, and for cleansing us from sin by the blood of his own son.

I usually don’t plan my pictures here on Weekly Fifty to coincide with any particular time of year, but for this one I did want to make it a little special due to the nature of the picture. It has nothing to do with Christmas, but this picture does have a great deal of meaning for me personally. Years ago one of the first pictures I took with my Nikon D200 and 50mm lens which made me realize that yes, even a novice like me could produce interesting photographs, was a mockingbird sitting on a shrub. It was the first photo I ever used here on Weekly Fifty (well, technically the second, but the first was just a snapshot with my Panasonic CZ7 pocket camera) and I’ve often wished I could go back and re-shoot that image knowing what I know now.

Not long ago I had that very opportunity.

I was walking across campus with a friend of mine on the way to a meeting when I came upon a very similar scene from that shot I posted more than six years ago: a mockingbird hanging out on a shrub. I didn’t have my camera with me but I took note of the scene, and the next day I brought my D7100 and 50mm lens on the off-chance that the bird would still be there. And it was :)

I tried to be a little more intentional this time around, but as with all wildlife photography there wasn’t much about the situation that I could control. Still, I took note of things like lighting, background, f/stop, and even background elements like students walking past, to create what I think is a far superior image. I shot some at f/2.8 and then a few more at f/1.8, moving myself around the hedge slowly and carefully so as not to startle the bird. It regarded me with mild curiosity and hopped around a bit, but didn’t seem to mind my presence too much. I was really hoping to catch the light in its eye, which I was thankfully able to do once it turned its head just so, and I also moved myself such that the lights coming through the trees in the background would create a nice pleasing blur.

This was a really fun shot to take and I’m so glad I got to essentially revisit one of my favorite scenes from so many years ago. It was an enjoyable example of how much I’ve learned, but also a good reminder of how much I still have left to figure out :)

Merry Christmas to all of you, and I hope you had a good 2019. Here’s to 2020 and many years beyond.

To wrap up 2019* I wanted to take a look back at the past year, and even farther, and talk about where things with Weekly Fifty have been, where they are now, and where I see them going in the new year and beyond.

*I know we still have almost two weeks left in the year, but I figure this is close enough :)

Sometimes I really wish I had a proper macro lens. There aren’t too many occasions on which it would be useful, but this was definitely one of them. I made do with my usual 50mm lens and close-up filters, but good gravy I think an actual macro lens would have been so much better! Maybe someday :) In the meantime I have fun with my cheapo close-up filters and I do enjoy getting shots like this, if nothing else for the sheer challenge of it all.

The sun was going down one evening early in November and I had just come from inside the house with a garbage bag full of trash that was bound for the bin, but I stopped short when I saw this wasp sitting on the black lid. He was just sort of minding his own business and didn’t seem interested in stinging anyone, so I ran inside and grabbed my D7100, which already had my 50mm lens attached, screwed on a +10 filter, and ran back (though tiptoeing the last few yards) to see if I could get a shot of this little bug before he flew away. I didn’t know how long I had to take the shot so I tried to act quickly, and thankfully the results were decent enough when it was all over.

I don’t often use my +10 filter because the depth of field is just too unwieldy, but I knew that for a shot like this it was going to give me a lot better results than a +4 filter. I also don’t like using wide apertures with a +10 filter because, again, depth of field. But because there wasn’t much sunlight left, and because I was shooting with my D7100 and not my D750 (and, hence, couldn’t raise the ISO very much without the picture becoming mired in digital noise) I ended up shooting at f/4. In fact, I shot this scene in Manual as opposed to Aperture Priority because I wanted to make sure I was getting the precise results I was hoping for. My final exposure settings were 50mm, f/4, 1/125 second, ISO 400, a little energon, and a lot of luck.

I used Live View as well, which is super unwieldy on the D7100, but it was the only way I could be sure of getting anything close to in focus. I knew I wanted the eye to be as sharp as possible so that was my main goal, but this was made even more tricky since the wasp wouldn’t hold still and kept on crawling, slowly, around the textured trash can lid. I wish the lighting would have been just a bit better but in general I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, and it was fun to get the chance to use my (very limited) macro gear for something a bit different than I usually shoot.