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

This is the one that almost got away.

As I left for work on a mild January morning a few months ago I noticed as soon as I opened the garage door that something wasn’t quite right. The whole neighborhood was shrouded in a thick fog, the kind that we only get a few times a year. I ran inside and told my two boys to come here, quick, and don’t worry about your shoes! They raced outside and immediately saw and felt what I was talking about. There’s a certain stillness unique to foggy mornings, where you can literally feel the air like a thin wet blanket as you move around beneath the trees. I had to get going so we didn’t spend too much time dwelling on it, but I was glad I got to share that quick moment with my kids before I left for the day.

A few minutes later I was driving south towards campus when I came across the scene you see above. It reminded me of the train scene in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, shot by the great Roger Deakins whose use of light and shadow in cinema is the stuff of legend. As I drove down the road, the light coming through the tree branches was almost breathtaking and it really felt like I was in the middle of a movie.

So what did I do? I thought about taking a picture, and then just kept on driving. I don’t know why, but it seemed to me in the moment that there wouldn’t be any way that I could actually capture a picture of the scene I saw before me, so why even bother trying?

And that’s when I stopped, turned around, and went back to get the shot.

Since I got my new Nikon D500 I’ve been keeping my D7100 and 50mm lens with me a little more often when I go to work, and thank the Lord I had it with me in my bag on this particular morning. I pulled on to a side street, grabbed the camera, ran out to the middle of the road, and snapped a few pictures. I didn’t have much time to plan or even think, but I knew I would need a large aperture to let in enough light for a fast shutter speed. I knew those tree branches had to be sharp. I shot a few pictures at f/1.8 and checked the LCD screen, and then quickly stopped down to f/2.8 in order to get the picture a little sharper since the trees in the foreground were just a little too blurry at such a wide aperture. I also moved my camera position, and instead of holding it I literally set it down on the road and pointed it upwards so I could get a more interesting point of view. I back-button focused on the street light, put the camera in continuous high-speed mode, and fired off about ten shots until the internal buffer filled up.

Why take a series of continuous shots? Because I’ve realized that when dealing with slow shutter speeds on a camera without a tripod or lens or sensor stabilization, your best chance at getting a sharp picture is to just take a boat-load of pictures :)

I shot this, like most of my pictures, in Aperture Priority with Auto-ISO and the resulting exposure of 1/60 second and ISO 3200 worked just fine. A little cropping and some other tweaks in Lightroom resulted in the picture you see here, which I think turned out beautifully. I kind of wish the power lines weren’t there but I didn’t want to go to the trouble of removing them in Photoshop, and I think they do help sell the idea that this is in an urban setting along with the street lights.

I’m so glad I turned around to get the shot.

This photo is similar in many ways to one that I shared on January 15. So similar, in fact, that it almost seems like a cop-out to put it here because it would seem there just isn’t much variation between the two. So why post it? Because it’s not about the subject, it’s about the lighting.

The first image was shot on a sunny afternoon in mid November which lit the whole scene in a warm glow while the bushes behind the magnolia seed pod had pockets of light shining through. It was lively and dynamic, despite the subject being most certainly deceased. This week’s photo is similar but the conditions in which it was shot were much different, which adds some subtle but important alterations to the image as a whole.

First and most importantly, I shot this on a cloudy day after a morning of light rain. That led to drastically different lighting conditions, and you might notice that the bushes behind the gumball are much darker than the magnolia seed. The other key change, and the one that I like the most, is that all the surfaces are wet. The rocks, the gumball, even the cypress leaf all have a shine to them that adds a sense of life and story to the picture.

To get this shot I held my D7100 with 50mm lens just below the rocky ledge and shot using Live View so I didn’t have to contort my body in strange ways. I took a few images at f/1.8 but shot this one at f/2.4 to get a bit more leeway in terms of depth of field, and I think the results turned out just fine. True the f/1.8 version had a blurrier background but at the cost of a less-defined subject, and that was a tradeoff I didn’t really want to make. Also, I should note that just because I’ve been shooting a lot of images with my new D500 doesn’t mean my old gear is useless. Quite the contrary! I still get plenty of use out of the old D7100, and if anything my D500 has continued to illustrate just how capable that old camera really is :)

I know what you’re probably thinking right now: what’s up with yet another picture of a goose? In truth I’m not exactly sure why I’ve had so many shots of birds this year, but for some reason I’m enjoying taking pictures like this. And in looking back at my Flickr library I don’t yet have a picture of a goose or duck standing one-footed on a rock…so there you go :)

When I left for work the morning I took this photo I grabbed my D500 which happened to have my 85mm f/1.8 lens attached, so I went with that just in case I came across any photographic situations. As often happens, at one point during the day I went out for a walk near Theta Pond and brought my camera with me only to find a small gaggle of geese hanging out on the west side of the water. This one in particular really caught my eye, partially because of how it (he?) was standing but also because of the lighting. The sun was behind me and cast a nice warm glow over the whole bird, with only a very small shadow just to the left of his (might as well use the masculine pronoun for easier writing) neck. He was preening his feathers constantly which made it really tricky to get a shot, especially with other geese swimming behind him, but I was able to get this single frame where he was perched with one foot and eyeing me somewhat skeptically.

As you might be able to tell I had to be low to the ground to shoot this, and as such it was nice to have my D500 since the rear screen flips out and the focusing in Live View is so much faster than my other cameras. I also had to consider the aperture, since depth of field is so thin on my 85mm lens but I really wanted to blur the background and isolate the subject. I figured I might as well try though, and opened the lens all the way to f/1.8 despite the fact that I knew I was likely to miss focus slightly or get some purple fringing as a result.

Turns out I nailed the focus just fine, and as for the fringing it’s not really a big deal. You can see just a bit of it along the bird’s back, but it’s not enough to detract from the image. Believe me when I say that a few seconds later this entire scene changed: more birds, different pose, and changing lighting conditions too. It’s fun to go for a shot like this and have it really work out :)

Almost exactly one year ago I shared a photo of something called the Magic Tree. It’s in Columbia, Missouri, and we like to go see it (there’s actually two of them) every year when we visit my wife’s family over Christmas. The photo I shared last year was shot with my Fuji X100F, and it’s actually the same tree as this year’s image, but the two pictures could be seen as two extreme ends of the same spectrum. One one end you have last year’s photo which was a close-up of a single green light with a thousand other bulbs scattered throughout the background. When we revisited the same location over Christmas a few months ago I wanted to go way to the other end of the continuum and capture an image of the entire tree. But in a different way than you might expect.

As we were walking around the tree it was about 30 degrees and windy, and my wife’s mother commented that it would be fun to get a video clip of the glowing branches swaying in the wind. I thought about this for a bit and realized that I could do something like it, but with a single image. I could use a long exposure to capture a sense of motion without taking any video at all. The difficult part (aside from waiting for a particularly strong gust of wind) was limiting the amount of light entering the camera to get an exposure long enough to capture a great deal of movement.

Enter the Fuji X100F, to the rescue once again.

Even after setting my ISO to 200 and my aperture to f/16, I was only getting a shutter speed of around 10 seconds for a properly-exposed image, which was much shorter than I wanted. Even though I shot this in RAW which meant I had a lot of editing flexibility in Lightroom I didn’t want to blow out the highlights, and even exposing for 15 seconds was far too much. Then I remembered that my X100F had an ideal solution: the built-in ND filter. I don’t use it very often, but good gravy it sure is handy in a pinch. The 3-stop ND filter gave me an exposure time of 30 seconds, which was even just a bit dimmer than I wanted but plenty to get the look I was aiming for.

The result is an interesting effect: many elements in the picture are static: the gazebo, the street light, the background lights, and the trunk of the tree. But the higher up the trunk you look the more you see the result of winds blowing through the branches, and it almost makes you dizzy to look at it. You might also notice that the horizon is slightly off-kilter, which was due to my tripod not being quite level, and while I would normally fix this in Lightroom I decided to leave it just as it was shot in order to give the viewer a small sense of unease. I really like how this turned out, and I hope you are able to go see these lights if you ever get the chance.

I wasn’t actually going to use this photo for anything, much less a Weekly Fifty post, when I shot it outside Willard Hall in mid December at Oklahoma State University. It was really just me getting out for a few minutes with my new camera and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and and taking a few pictures just for fun. But as I was looking through my image library in Lightroom something caught my eye about this particular photo. It’s different from other squirrel pictures I have taken, and a little more compelling and interesting than a squirrel just sitting on the ground or climbing a tree. I realized after a while that what really made this one stand out was the lighting, much moreso than just about any other image of an animal I have shared here on the blog.

I got this shot after a walk around Theta Pond with my camera and not seeing anything that I wanted to photograph. Like, nothing at all. Not a single goose or duck or turtle or anything. No worries though, it was a nice day and I needed to get back to my office anyway. Then I saw this squirrel by the base of a tree, and followed him a hundred yards north to a large porch on the south end of Willard Hall. Like most squirrels this one was a little skittish, but I was quiet and careful and eventually got a picture just like this but shrouded in shadow. Oh well. That happens. And then, almost as if this little guy knew what I was up to, he scooted over just a few inches so his face was perfectly lit. I raised my camera, fired off three exposures in rapid succession, and he turned and ran the other way.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I believe this little squirrel gave me a photographic gift that afternoon. The way the light hits his eye, and the shadows wind across his body, add a sense of depth and complexity that I don’t normally get in most of my shots. Usually I look for subjects that are evenly-lit all around, which is kind of boring but it’s a formula that works for me. This picture, while nothing especially noteworthy as far as shots of squirrels go, was different enough that I’m starting to re-think my approach to animal photos altogether.

Like last week’s photo, I shot this when I was out for a walk at Theta Pond on a warm day in December. And like last week’s photo this one is also a duck, though in a slightly different context. I shot this with the same camera/lens combination (Nikon D500, 50mm f/1.8) and, as with last week’s photo, I have the camera’s Live View to thank for it. But before I get to that, look at the water in the foreground. In order to get this shot I held my camera about an inch off the surface of the water which wasn’t super risky since there wasn’t much in the way of wind or waves, but it still was just a little nerve-wracking. Let’s just say I made sure to use both hands and a sturdy wrist strap.

One thing about Nikon DSLRs and Live View is that they’re just not great when it comes to continuous autofocus tracking. They’re not even that great at single-point autofocus, though I do appreciate that on this D500 you can at least tap the screen to set your focus area. For this shot I set the focus are and then continually pressed the back button to reset focus as the duck swam around, and basically just sat there taking a bunch of photos for a minute until the duck turned around to go to the other side of the pond. I wasn’t all that optimistic that any shots would be usable, but this one turned out great not just from a compositional standpoint but also because it’s super sharp and in focus. Most of my other shots were either not quite focused or the duck was in a weird position. But this one…well, this one worked :)

I have noticed that I tend to go in waves, so to speak, with photos at Theta Pond. I’ll walk over there and be enamored of the foliage and fauna one day and return to take some pictures, and then weeks will go by without me giving it a second thought. Even though it still feels like cheating to walk a few hundred yards from my office to get pictures of animals that are there pretty much year-round, it is something I enjoy doing and I try to tell myself that it’s OK to repeat the same type of image. Every picture is unique even if the subjects are the same, and as long as I enjoy the process and learn something from it then what’s the harm in doing so?

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 :)