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

Over the last several years, one of my favorite photography locations I keep returning to time and time again is Theta Pond on the OSU Campus. I don’t really have location data on my photos, but if I did some kind of heat map I bet there would be a giant blob right in this section of the OSU campus where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students (not to mention faculty, staff, and just members of the general public) walk past each day. It’s an outstanding place to get photos, but also take a brief respite from the daily rigors of working on a college campus.

The pond is surrounded by cypress and magnolia trees, some of which tower above the landscape but others, such as the one you see here, that are smaller, somewhat spindly, and produce beautiful purple flowers that are quite unlike almost any others I can recall seeing. As I walked past this tree I saw this flower bud that looked like it would have some picture potential, though I wasn’t quite sure exactly what to do with it. Should I try moving around so it would be backlit? What about taking a picture from above or below? What else should be in the frame? Lots of possibilities for sure, but I didn’t have all day and even if I did, I wasn’t about to spend more than a few minutes on this photo. I cared, but…not that much :)

I soon realized that if I included the fountain behind the flower it might give me a unique background that seemed a bit more interesting, and compelling, than brick walls or green grass that I was seeing when I positioned myself at other points around the flower. I dialed in an aperture of f/8 and took a few shots where that bright spot of blurry light was to the left of the flower–just as you see here. The more I looked at the results I was getting in my camera, the less I liked it. I thought the focus of the photo should be the flower, of course, and ended up shifting my point of view just a bit so that the bokeh ball was on the right side and the fountain, which is more of a white blur in the end result, was filling the spot vacated by the light. Ah, that’s more like it. I thought to myself as I fired off a couple shots and then went back to my office.

Except…when I got home from work and loaded the images into Lightroom, I found myself strangely drawn to the original composition that you see here. Everything about it was more pleasing, and more balanced, than the other version. The off-center flower looked much better with the spot of light to its left. The diagonal branch cutting vertically through the frame, combined with branches below and to the right, created a set of triangles that just kind of felt right.

And that’s probably my main takeaway here: taking a good photo isn’t always, or even often, about achieving mathematical, metaphysical, perfection. Sometimes you just have to go with your instinct and take a picture (or multiple picture, and then select one for your blog) that feels right. Even if you can’t exactly explain why you like it, liking it alone is reason enough.

I remember years ago, when I first got my old-school Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8 lens, taking a picture of the tiny yellow crocus flowers in our front yard and being hit with the realization that yes, I could, in fact, get cool photos with my camera. Such images weren’t out of reach, the purview of a small group of experts with thousands of dollars of camera gear. All I needed was some basic equipment and, most importantly, a bit of knowledge of how photography works: exposure, lighting, composition, and the like. Ever since then (I really mean it. We still live in the same house, and I think about those early photography lessons a lot.) I have found myself returning to those same kinds of settings to kind of revisit the scenarios I encountered over a decade ago. And so, that’s kind of what we have here: a crocus flower growing in the same spot as the ones I took photos of way back in…what was it. 2012 or 2013? Who knows :)

We (me, my wife, and our kids) first noticed the familiar crocus flowers poking up about two weeks before I took this photo, and for several days my reaction was one of pleasant familiarity–despite everything going on in the world, here were these same little yellow flowers showing up once again after a long, dry winter. I honestly didn’t think too much about taking a picture because I couldn’t quite shake the feeling of been there, done that. Why take yet a photo of the same yellow flowers when there are so many other things that I could capture instead?

The answer to that rhetorical question, the same answer that has come to me many times over the years and was so eloquently stated by GameInformer editor Brian Shea, is simple: Joy is reason enough. Why take my camera out to the same spot in our yard for a photo of the same flowers? Because it’s fun. It’s enjoyable. And that’s really all the reason I, or anyone else, really needs.

And so as my kids were getting ready for school, and the sun had just started shining on the horizon through a layer of wispy early-morning clouds, I decided I would grab my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens and go out to get a shot of the crocuses. I didn’t have too much time to work with since I also had to get going to work, so I just set my aperture to f/8 which, I have learned, is a pretty solid all-around choice when taking close-up shots like this. (Basically, if you’re not sure what aperture to use, just go with f/8 and don’t worry about it.) I composed the shot so as to keep the green arms sprouting from the base of the plant in the frame and angled myself with our house behind me and our neighbor’ yard across the street in the background.

That decision resulted in an unexpected surprise, and a fun addition to this familiar flower photo. The bright band of yellow going across the photo is not a field of additional crocuses, but instead the sun bathing our neighbor’s yard in early-morning light. I really didn’t expect that, but it’s one of those fun benefits of taking pictures in the early morning: the light just hits different, and makes for the kinds of photos you really can’t get any other time of the day.

I doubt this will be the last picture of a yellow front-yard crocus flower you will see here on Weekly Fifty. Indeed, I certainly hope it’s not! But though it might win point for originality, it does make me smile, and that’s good enough for me :)

This is kind of a companion piece to a photo I shared two weeks ago–that of a lone windmill set against a deep blue sky in the middle of a field of grass in central Kansas. In the earlier post I went on at length about my choice to zoom out to 70mm and show the windmill as a relatively small portion of the image, leaving the rest of the frame to be filled by the deep blue sky and rich gold field in the foreground. This shot has some obvious similarities, sure, but also plenty of notable differences that make it well worth its own entry here on Weekly Fifty.

Something took place before I shot this photo that has happened many times to me over the years, and will probably continue long into the future. When I saw this scene out the east side of my car as I was driving down Highway 77, I just…kept on going. I thought to myself “Hey, I bet that would be a cool photo!” But was it really worth the trouble of pulling over, getting out my camera, framing the shot, and everything else? Could I really spare the five minutes it would take, when I still had several hours left on my drive? Would I even get a good photo?

Yes, yes, and yes.

One lesson I keep learning (or perhaps not learning!) as I continue with Weekly Fifty is that the answer to questions like these isn’t always going to be yes, but it usually doesn’t hurt to at least try. A mile later I stopped my car, turned around, drove back to the windmill, and decided that whether I was able to get a good photo or not, it wouldn’t be so bad to to take a few minutes of my time to see what I could capture. I shot this at f/8, 1/1500 second, zoomed in all the way to 200mm which is a pretty big contrast from the windmill picture I shared a few weeks ago that showed far more sky and grass than structure. I took about two dozen shots with the windmill positioned in the center at various focal length but, almost as as afterthought, I figured I might as well take one where it was positioned off to the side. Surely it wouldn’t look all that great, but as long as I was there…why not give it a chance?

As my wife and I were looking through the results in Lightroom a few days later, she kept coming back to this one–a shot that I initially ignored, but rapidly came to appreciate the more we compared it to the rest. It has a fun sense of playfulness that I’m not able to capture, almost as though the windmill and the brick-and-mortar structure (cellar? Tornado shelter? Drainage ditch?) are in the midst of a conversation, with the tree listening and waiting for a chance to interject its own thoughts. Other small details such as the metal water trough and weathered fence posts round out the rural setting quite nicely, without being too on-the-nose. The cloudless sky add to the expansive feeling of the image, and all in all I’m very happy not just with this photo but with my decision to delay my trip just a bit in order to take advantage of a picture opportunity. I’m going to try to remember this more on future drives, which I know I have said other times but maybe this time it’ll finally stick :)

This is one of those photos that I think works well on a couple of different levels. There’s the surface layer, which is the image presented exactly as-is for the viewer to see and take in as they see fit. A snowy scene in the middle of a city (which you can sort of tell thanks to the brick building in the background) with a stone arch bridge crossing a small stream deep in a valley below. What you see, essentially, is what you get, though what you get out of it is another matter entirely.

On another level, which you can’t see just by looking at the picture, is the personal connection I have to this scene and the memories it brings back as I look at it. My wife and I lived in St. Paul for five years when she was in graduate school, long before our kids were born in a time that almost feels like another life. We enjoyed exploring the Twin Cities on foot, bike, or automobile, and often ended up at Minnehaha Falls–a 50-foot waterfall surrounded by gardens, green spaces, and hiking trails that lead all the way to the Mississippi River. Though in all the years we lived in the area, we never went to Minnehaha Falls in winter. That all changed on a recent visit to Minnesota for my cousin’s wedding.

My family and I decided to head up a few days prior to the event in order to spend time with friends and family, and one chilly afternoon we, along with our friend, bundled up in our winter gear, hopped in the car, and trekked down to Minnehaha Falls from the northern suburbs where we were staying. The biting, bitter cold was a far cry from what we are used to down in Oklahoma, but the view, and the experience of being there together, more than made up for it. The walkway down to the base of the waterfall was closed (which did not deter many intrepid visitors who treated the sign and its accompanying padlock on the gate as little more than a minor inconvenience or, perhaps, a dare) so instead we walked around at street level taking in the view while our kids threw rocks and ice chunks into the stream below.

It really was an impressive sight, to see everything around us draped in a blanket of snow with the semi-frozen stream bubbling and gurgling as it flowed over the rocks and dirt before tumbling five stories into the valley. I took this shot of the scene with my Fuji X100F set to f/8, 1/400 second, ISO 400 and though we probably won’t have the opportunity to return to Minnehaha Falls for many years, I hope this helps me capture the time we spent there and remember it for the rest of my life.

Whenever I have the opportunity to take a prolonged solo drive, like going back to see friends and family in Nebraska, I enjoy, as often as I’m able to, taking the long and winding route rather than something faster, and more direct, such as the interstate. I like to stop, stretch my legs, look around, and take a photo or two along the way. It helps pass the time while also giving me the chance to see swaths of natural beauty that might otherwise go flying by at 75 miles an hour.

One such route involves Highway 77 which winds through Kansas and, despite being built up over the years to the point where many long sections are now four-lane divided roads, still has a distinctly rural midwestern feel to it. While massive, modern wind turbines now tend to dominate the landscape it’s not uncommon to come across their wood-and-steel forebears such as the one you see here and, when such occasions arise, I enjoy attempting to capture them with my camera. I’ve shared some of these pictures here on Weekly Fifty before and I hope to continue doing so for years to come, as I do quite enjoy seeing these old windmills. My wife does too, and we even have a few windmill photos we have taken along Highway 77 printed and hung on our wall at home.

For this shot, which was somewhere south of Junction City, I used my Nikon D750 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens zoomed out to 70mm with an exposure of f/8, 1/1500 second, ISO 100. I initially took several photos at a much longer focal length such that the windmill filled more of the frame, but then backed off a bit to try something a bit different. In nearly all of the windmill photos I have taken over the years, I have tried to fill the vertical dimension with as much of the windmills as possible. It just kind of made sense to me: when taking a picture of a windmill, one ought to emphasize the windmill. And while that line of thinking isn’t necessarily flawed, it does leave out the possibility that there might be other equally compelling ways to compose such a shot. And so, I figured, might as well try something new and see what happened.

As my wife and I looked through the windmill photos she kept on returning to this one, and for good reason. The windmill piercing the sky like a church steeple is clearly the standout feature in the shot, but the picture is about so much more than that single structure. The huge sky, field in the foreground, fence receding into the background, and clouds in the distance all work together to showcase the sheer size of the midwestern prairie. It’s a photo of a windmill, yes, but it’s a complete composition containing so much more than just that one single subject.

I don’t know if this will end up getting printed and hung on our wall, but the more I look at it the more I appreciate how different it is from other windmill photos I have taken. I like that I took a minute to try something new, and I hope you enjoy it also.