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

So…recently I shared a few pictures of bees here on the blog and in my descriptions for each one I wrote about how I liked those photos but they weren’t quite what I had hoped for. This picture is the polar opposite. Not only is it what I was hoping to get, it’s actually better. It’s probably the best shot of a bird I have ever taken, and it carries some really cool memories along with it too.

But first, as usual, a bit of background.

Each year we have the pleasure of hearing, and sometimes seeing, cardinals in our back yard. The bright plumage on the males is really something special, especially up close, but even if you can’t see them it’s really fun to hear their songs in the morning. This year in early May I was out with my kids climbing the tree and swinging on ropes in our back yard and I noticed this particular cardinal flying back and forth quite a bit over the course of the afternoon. Then I noticed he was flying into one of our small trees quite a bit, and soon my kids and I put two and two together and figured there must be a nest in that tree. So we waited until he flew away, poked our heads in, and saw two tiny baby birds, newly hatched, lost in sleep while waiting for their next meal.

The boys ran inside to tell my wife and I started thinking about how to get a picture of the bright red bird. I knew I would need my 70-200 f/2.8 lens since it’s the longest zoom I have, and my crop-sensor Nikon D500 too. A longer focal length like 300, 400, or more would give me a lot more freedom and options but alas, I don’t have anything longer than 200mm, so I knew I would have to make do with what was available. I got my camera gear, returned to the back yard, and waited.

And waited.

And waited more. Soon my kids returned and went back to swinging and climbing, and I had to find a way to walk a line between amateur birdwatcher and attentive father. The cardinal did come out of the tree and I was able to get a couple shots, but nothing special. I went back and forth between shooting photos and running around with my kids, but ended the day without much success at the former. (But great success at the latter, so it’s all good.)

The same pattern repeated itself over the next few days: we had some bird sightings while playing in the yard, of both Papa and Mama cardinal, but I was never able to get a really good picture. I was too far away, or the birds were too high in the tree, or they flew off before I could press the shutter…you know how it goes. The birds came and went, and their babies got louder and larger, and I kept trying to get The Shot with no good results.

That is, until about a week later when I took the picture you see above. It was about 7pm on a mild evening in April. The sun was on its way down and both cardinal parents were spending a great deal of time hanging around on our backyard fence. That’s when I had the idea to stand close to the small tree with their nest and just wait. I thought maybe the birds were used to seeing me by now, and might not freak out at the sight of this human with a gigantic camera lens pointed right at them.

And that’s when the magic started to happen. I slowly, carefully, stepped closer to the fence with my camera firing away. Papa Cardinal alighted on the fence, hopped around, flew off, returned, and repeated that pattern over and over. All the while I was shooting at 10FPS in 12-bit RAW while slowly creeping closer and hoping one of the pictures would turn out. I was probably out there for 45 minutes and ended up taking over 700 shots, but got some real winners including this one.

I got this at 200mm, f/2.8, 1/400 second, ISO 1600. A longer lens would have helped, as I mentioned before, but I did appreciate the nice blurry background courtesy of the extra-large aperture of my lens. I did have to crop this image a lot, but shooting at 20 megapixels gives a lot of room for that so it wasn’t a big deal. In the end I got a picture I’m very proud of, and along the way my kids and I got to learn a little something about birds and their babies too.

Who knew that a few weeks after posting a photo of a bee on a flower I would end up with another one to share? Not me, certainly, though I must admit that a few of the pictures I have taken recently have certainly got me thinking about purchasing an actual macro lens and getting rid of my set of cheap close-up filters. Part of me enjoys the challenge of shooting with these simple screw-on adapters, but another part of me sure would like to have an actual macro lens to make shots like this so much less hassle. Still, I do enjoy a challenge and it is fun to see what I can capture with a set of limited gear.

They say you can take great photos in your own backyard, and this illustrates that age-old maxim quite well. We’ve had a few small bushes right off our porch that were here when we bought our house years ago and, though we never do anything but trim them in the spring and fall, they keep growing back like clockwork each year. And just like the summer storms that follow close behind a sudden drop in temperature, large yellow bees invariable come to these violet flowers in search of nectar every April and May. I have tried to take photos of them over the years to little avail, but this year I had my Nikon D500 instead of my old D7100, the critical difference being the 10fps shutter on the former (along with near-unlimited buffer) compared to the paltry offering of the latter. I forget what exactly it shoots–perhaps 5 or 6 fps with a buffer that fills before you can blink, thus making fast-action shots well-nigh impossible. And since these bees barely stay in one place for more than a heartbeat, the D500 was a much better tool for taking photos than any of my other cameras.*

So here’s what I did to get this shot: 50mm lens with +4 close-up filter. F/5.6. Auto-ISO with minimum shutter speed of 1/250 second. AF-C with back-button focus. Then I pushed myself through the flowers to get super close to the bee, holding the back button to continue focusing the whole time, and the instant the bee (which was constantly moving from flower to flower) was in my sights I fired off a burst of images. I repeated that process many times over the course of a few days and eventually got this image which was one out of exactly two that came close to turning out, and even those two weren’t as good as I would have liked. I’m still chasing my white whale of bee photography: a ball of black and yellow fuzz hovering in front of a flower, right before going in for a landing. I’ll get that shot someday, and in the meantime it’s fun to have these learning opportunities.

Of course the best part of this shot was that I got to share it with my six-year-old son who was with me the whole time. He was taking pictures of the same bee with his little Canon PowerShot 3 megapixel pocket camera, and was so excited to show me the shots he was able to get with it. I wouldn’t have cared if I got no usable shots at all–photography wasn’t really the point. Spending time with my kids (or, in this case, one kid while the other was riding his bike) was the real goal.

Mission accomplished :)

*The crop factor of a DX camera really comes in handy with shots like this, so I’m a bit reluctant to use my D750. And the Fuji X100F…forget it. That camera is awesome, but not for shots like this :)

https://youtu.be/budhLImf9WQ

Maybe it’s my own impatience, maybe it’s me getting stir-crazy from the pandemic, but for whatever the reason I decided I didn’t want to wait until the end of the year to do another update video :)

“The moon is supposed to be really good tonight,” my wife said as we were getting ready to put the kids to bed. I stepped out on the back porch to check, but the white ball that governs the night was still below the horizon as the sun was beginning its final descent for the day so there wasn’t really a whole lot to see. Fast forward to about 8pm and my wife and I were standing out in the front yard looking at the brilliant ball of light poking over the treetops as dusk transitioned to twilight. She was right–it was a gorgeous full moon, the kind that you only get to see a few times a year, and combined with the mild weather it was one of those evenings you just hate to let slip by. I ran inside, grabbed my Nikon D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and went back to get some shots.

A few minutes later I found myself halfway down the street in search of a good vantage point from which to take a photo of our little celestial brother but it seemed like I just couldn’t get a good shot without power lines or trees in the way. I was able to get a couple, sure, but nothing that really stood out to me. It was a fun experience though, and after a few minutes I walked back to our house where my wife and my oldest son were in the driveway looking at the moon. He was in his jammies and should have been in bed, but my wife said he could stay up and see the moon. He even had his little pocket camera with him to take a few shots of his own.

I told my wife that I wasn’t able to get a great photo and she mentioned I could try shooting from the vacant lot down the road. I hadn’t thought about that so I quickly ran inside, got my license, and hopped into the car. As I was pulling out the driveway I motioned to my son to get in with me, and that’s what made this little picture opportunity way more special than it would have been otherwise.

The two of us, me in a pair of old flip flops and he in his pajamas, high-tailed it down to the lot. We parked the car and ran into the field, our cameras in tow, excitedly talking about where to shoot from and sharing the back of our camera screens with each other. I forget the exact exposure values I used, but I dialed in a -3EV exposure compensation to get the moon just right without overexposing, knowing I could adjust the shadows in Lightroom afterwards. I really like how the moon is shrouded in a veil of clouds and framed by leaves and branches, but the best part of this picture was the impromptu opportunity I got to have with my son. You can take all the pictures you want, but it’s moments like these which elevate them to something really special.

Dandelions. They’re like sand. They are a nuisance, and they don’t seem to go away no matter how many you pull up. They’re not special, and most homeowners like myself see them as one of the last things worth photographing. But sometimes, even the most mundane things can make you look twice and think about something beautiful. That’s what happened here, when my wife and I were out on a walk with our boys and I noticed this rather ordinary dandelion in the middle of a rather ordinary field on a rather ordinary street, on the edge of a simple midwestern town.

We walk down this particular street several times a week, and I often bring my D7100 and 50mm lens just in case something happens to catch my eye. Usually not much does, which tends to happen when you trod the same route with such regular frequency, but as we were walking south one day in mid April I looked down and saw this puff of white all by itself and I thought it would be an interesting photo. So on our way back I told my wife to go on ahead with the kids while I lay down on the grass with my camera to take this picture.

As I often do I shot several wide open at f/1.8 only to come to my senses and make sure to grab a few at f/2.8 just in case the 1.8 versions weren’t to my liking. It’s a good thing too, since the depth of field on the former was just a little too shallow. (Which is a refrain that is all-too-common here on Weekly Fifty. You’d think I would learn, but I never do.) This was the last one in the series, out of maybe 20 or 30 shots (all fired in pretty rapid succession) and the one that just nailed it. You know why?

It’s all about the background. Or, specifically, the giant tree in the background that makes the white cloud sitting atop the slender stem stand out so much. That was completely intentional on my part, and I’m so glad it worked out the way I hoped it would. I mean, how do you get a white dandelion to stand out against a blue sky? You can’t, not really, unless you shoot from a higher angle so it’s against the green grass. But then the photo isn’t very interesting. So as I lined up my shot I shuffled myself around just so, making sure to position the head of the dandelion right inside the greenery in the background. I also made sure no other dandelions were in the shot, which was one thing that stood out to me about this particular plant in the first place. By isolating the subject, and positioning the subject against a contrasting background, I was able to take a simple weed and turn it into a photograph I quite like.

Look, I get it. On first glance this looks like kind of a gross photo. It’s a dirty brown tennis ball in the middle of a grassy field. But bear with me a second: I think it’s kind of interesting and you might too.

It starts about an hour before this photo was taken, when my wife and I were out on a walk with our kids after it rained one morning back in April. The world had ground to a halt with coronavirus-related quarantines and social distancing, so even it was just a little bit warm out we took any chance we could to get the kids outside and running around. It was probably 60 degrees and cloudy but the rain had abated so were like “Get your boots on boys, we’re outta here.” Not a hundred yards from our house our progress ground to a halt when they saw a fuzzy caterpillar crawling around on the curb, and they watched it for at least five minutes while my wife and I chatted with a neighbor. I had my D7100 and 50mm lens with me and I wanted to get a shot of said caterpillar, but at the same time I didn’t want to crowd out my boys who were entranced with its undulating movement across the concrete.

So I left it alone, and after a little while we went on our way on the four-mile walk that had become a daily ritual for our family as a way to get the blood moving and enjoy a little change of scenery from the interior of our house in which we found ourselves far more often than before all the coronavirus mess hit. The boys jumped in puddles, my wife and I talked, and I had my camera at the ready in case any photo opportunities hit.

Sadly, nothing really presented itself (or perhaps I just wasn’t looking close enough) and by the time we got back home I think I might have shot, perhaps, three or four photos. No big deal though, there’s always next time. But then I noticed a caterpillar, possibly the same one from earlier, on the other side of the street. (Was it the unwitting subject of a children’s joke? The world may never know.) Our boys were no longer interested in creepy crawlies, having gone on to play with a soccer ball and tennis racquet, so I spent a minute photographing the caterpillar while my wife talked (at least six feet away!) with our neighbor.

I soon realized that the non-flip-out screen of my D7100 was going to make a photo of said caterpillar a little challenging, and that’s when I noticed this dirty, nasty tennis ball in the gutter. I held it near the caterpillar and, much to my surprise, it crawled right up onto the ball. Bingo. Now this was something I could work with. I took a few shots while holding it with my hand but didn’t like seeing my thumb protruding up from the bottom of the frame, so I set the ball on the wet grass and kept rotating it with my left hand while firing off pictures with my right hand. I wanted to get a picture with the caterpillar cresting the ball, ideally with its head held up, and though I don’t think I quite got the shot I was looking for I am really pleased with what I did get. I took several at f/1.8 (because depth of field!) but eventually had the sense to stop down to 2.8, though perhaps I should have gone even smaller because in this shot, which was indeed at f/2.8, the front of the ball is a little too blurry for my taste. Shallow depth of field isn’t everything, folks. Sometimes you just need things in focus.

This picture was a nice bookend to our walk and a nice way to spend a few minutes doing something fun and creative in the midst of so much gloom and anxiety. I’m writing this post on April 16 when so much of the future is uncertain, and that’s when it feels like the moments to search for that spark of inspiration are more important than ever.

I wasn’t going to post this picture. I almost didn’t even take this picture. It’s not my favorite photo, and in fact I would say I don’t even like it that much at all. However, despite everything I don’t really care for in this image I thought I would share it here anyway as kind of a progress pic. Sort of.

Here’s the deal. Or the background, rather. In June of 2014 I took this shot of a honeybee approaching a magnolia flower which was the first of its kind I was ever able to get. I got it with nothing more than my humble little D200 and 50mm f/1.8 lens in a mostly unexpected act of photographic serendipity. It’s kind of a neat photo, but one thing I wish I could have gotten better was a full image of the bee. That picture was almost the shot I wish I could have gotten. Almost, almost…but not quite.

Ever since then I have thought about how cool it would be to get a shot of a bee sipping nectar from a flower, or hovering close to a flower, or something, anything, involving a bee and a flower. But man, those shots are difficult! Or at least they are for me, since there’s probably more I could do to get those types of shots that I just don’t know about. Or, more accurately, am too lazy to do on a regular basis :)

Anyway, if I ever see flowers and bees and happen to have my camera I always try to catch that white whale, photographically speaking, and while it’s never really happened to my satisfaction I keep trying hoping to one day get the shot I’ve been thinking about for years. In the meantime I need to learn to keep practicing, and also be happy with the pictures I am able to get even if they’re not what I would consider ideal or even all that great. They’re pictures that I made, and that’s not nothing :)

I kind of wish I had a photo shot with a normal camera, with a regular lens, to give you some perspective here. What you’re seeing is a very close-up shot of a flowering redbud, a tree quite common where we live in Oklahoma. I don’t know if it’s a native plant or not, but these things are everywhere in my city and it’s really cool to see the landscape explode in a sea of purple each spring. I’ve taken a few shots of these trees over the years but it’s always neat to revisit them as subjects each year. There’s just something kind of special about seeing such rich hues of purple on so many tree branches.

I shot this one evening in late March after playing a game of kickball in my neighbor’s field with my kids. My wife took the boys inside for their baths and I had a few minutes to walk across the street and shoot some close-ups with my D7100, 50mm f/1.8 lens, and a few close-up filters. This was taken with a combination I almost never use: a +10 filter screwed on top of a +4 filter, which results in a really close-up shot that’s a lot of fun but super unwieldy unless you’re really careful.

To wit: the green tree bud is about 1/8″ in diameter. Depth of field could probably be measured in millimeters on this shot, and yet my aperture was set to f/8. That’s how crazy things get when shooting at close-up distances, and this wasn’t even with a real macro setup. A true macro lens would produce a picture much richer in detail and sharpness, but alas, a true macro lens costs a lot of money that I don’t really want to spend :)

I played around with a few different angles on this shot, eventually settling on what you see here because I quite liked the green bud emerging from what looks like a thick velvet haze. Or, as the old man with the ladder might say, a purple mist :)

Look back through my posts here on Weekly Fifty and you’ll probably see a handful that look a lot like this: yellow crocuses (croci?) poking through the brown grass. This is the first one I can remember sharing back in 2013 and it’s a scene I enjoy revisiting each year for a few reasons, even though I’m not sure that any subsequent photos really have a lot to add to the collective conversation. For one, I think shots like this are pretty. It’s enjoyable and somewhat reassuring to see the same sight each spring–as long as these flowers make their annual appearance it’s a sign that all is right in the world. I also enjoy experimenting with different ways to present this scene in terms of lighting, angle of view, closeness to subject, backlighting, even my editing choices. Is today’s picture any more or less interesting, or valuable, than any similar photos I have taken in years past? Maybe, but maybe not. Was it a fun picture to take? Absolutely, which is all the reason I need to post it here :)

The gear I used for this shot is nothing special: D7100 that I got in fall of 2013 and the same 50mm lens I’ve had since spring of 2012. I took this at f/2 in the late afternoon which gave the backlit flower a bit of a sunny glow. What I did differently this time around was pay careful attention to the whole composition. Not just the flower in front, but the other flowers in the background, the green blades of grass, even the white highlights on the right side. By looking at the entire scene and not just the main subject I was able to create a picture that is, in my opinion, a lot more visually appealing than some other similar photos I have shot.

It’s a good reminder to me of why I like learning from my past pictures. I used to get embarrassed by some of the photos I have taken, even ones here on Weekly Fifty, but I’ve really tried to see my old pictures as learning opportunities. It makes scrolling through my photo stream a lot more interesting and, even at times, inspiring.

I don’t know if these types of photos are cheating or not. All it takes to create an image like this is this simple process:

• Find a small object sitting on the ground.
• Set your camera to Aperture Priority
• Open up your aperture as wide as it will go
• Take a picture

Of course it helps to pay attention to lighting, composition, contrast, and a lot of other elements as well. But if you just want a cool-looking photo to share on your Instagram, this process works almost every time and that’s why it almost feels like cheating.

And yet, that doesn’t mean that these kinds of photos aren’t fun to take :)

I like it when I can find photo opportunities like this instead of create them artificially, and this feather sitting on the ground is a good example. I was walking around Theta Pond in February and saw this white feather sitting on the dark ground, and that type of contrast is nice because your eye is immediately drawn to the subject and then, later, to the surroundings. The sun was already kind of low on the horizon because that’s what happens in the afternoon in February, and I knew my 50mm lens would capture the scene pretty well.

I set my D7100 on the ground, enabled Live View, and took a few shots at f/1.8. I always like to stop down a bit after getting some shots at 1.8 just in case the depth of field is too shallow or the image is a bit soft, but in this case it was the wider-aperture version I liked best. Even though the 50mm f/1.8 lens isn’t a top optical performer the sharpness of the feather was pretty solid in this image, and there was a very slight breeze that had lifted it up just a bit to add a sense of weightlessness to the picture that I quite enjoyed.