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

A few months ago my wife and I spent the morning at a local glass blowing school learning about the process of creating beautiful works of art using glass, some simple tools, and a very hot furnace. Instead of reading or watching videos, we had the privilege of learning by doing: taking an active role in making our own glass creations alongside an incredible, and very patient, instructor. We each chose to make a paperweight–hers in the shape of a heart and mine more like a misshapen football–and in the weeks since that experience as I have looked at both of our creations I kept coming back to the thought that it would be fun to capture them with my camera. Not just a simple snapshot, but something with a degree of careful consideration and an eye for composition. Something worthy of the experience.

So I got out my tripod and a couple Nanlite Pavotubes, shut myself in the laundry room where I could utilize the smooth, reflective surface of the washing machine as I have done many times before, and took the following photo:

It was…fine. It worked in that it kind of got the point across to someone who had never seen the paperweight that it was…well…a paperweight. The picture was more utilitarian than artistic, and while it was a fun photographic experiment, I didn’t think it really did justice to the paperweight itself and the experience my wife and I had creating them. In short, I knew I could do better.

So a few days later I went back to the laundry room armed with four Pavotubes and more of an actual goal in mind for what I wanted the resulting image to look like. I dialed one to reddish-orange and the other to deep blue, and set them at a V-shaped angle behind the paperweight. (Basically, I wanted them to be adjacent to the classic tried-and-true teal and orange color scheme. It’s not going to win points for creativity, but it works really well and gets the job done quite nicely.) Then I put another light, set to a correlated color temperature of 4200K, just off to the right side while holding another 4200K light in my left hand. More on that in a bit.

I set my Nikon D750, with 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, to an exposure of f/13, 1/20 second, ISO 100 with auto-ISO disabled. I used manual mode since I wanted full control not just of the lighting and the entire setting, but the exposure as well–in this case I knew that I could make better decisions than my camera. I also used a two-second timer so as to make sure the vibration of my finger pressing the shutter did not linger and, as a result, affect the image. Finally, when the shutter clicked open I waved the fourth Pavotube from left to right above my camera which had a softening effect on the shadows, and resulted in the white horizontal stripe you can see at about the midpoint of the glass surface.

It might seem a little ironic given the somewhat heightened nature of this image, but there is no AI here at all. Not even for Denoise, since I shot it at ISO 100. I did all the editing by hand including a good deal of dust removal. (I shot this on top of my washing machine, remember. Not the ideal surface for this kind of thing, but not too bad either.) Mostly what I like about this image is how it reflects a mood or a feeling in addition to just showing a cool paperweight, and it also reminds me of a fun experience that my wife and I got to have together. And that’s the most important thing of all.

This photo was a bit of an experiment. I’m not sure if it worked, and I’m not sure what to even think about it from a purely aesthetic or artistic perspective, but it certainly is a bit different for me and a fun photo to try. Basically, I was wondering what would happen if I shot some small plants (flowers? weeds? I have no idea, but they’re just a couple inches tall and if you have any idea what they are I’d love to know.) in my neighbor’s yard with, shall we say, an extreme degree of backlighting. While last week’s photo, which was taken in roughly the same location, used backlighting to enhance the subject and create a sense of vibrant energy that was missing in photos of a flower alone, the sun-drenched background in this image overpowers the subjects altogether. It’s downright obtrusive and even feels oppressive, as if a celestial potentiometer needs to be dialed back a tick or two.

But then, that effect was kind of the point here. I can’t recall taking a picture like this before and wanted to give it a chance or, at the very least, just experiment with something new. I lowered my Nikon D750 so that it was almost resting on the ground, flipped out the rear screen, enabled the live view, and started shooting. I tried some larger apertures but eventually, in a move that will likely surprise nobody who has been following along lately, I ended up at my go-to aperture of f/11 which allowed not one, but two, of these green protrusions to be pretty well focused. I moved my camera to get them kind of along the two vertical thirds dividers, though that’s a bit charitable to the one on the right side. What really stood out to me were the edges of each plant, glowing with so much backlight that they almost appeared to be electrified. I didn’t have too much in mind for the foreground and background, but I was pretty sure that it would look interesting simply because of the vastly different kind of photo I had in mind.

In the end I think this worked out quite well, if nothing else just because it’s different from what I normally shoot. The backlighting is so extreme that the greens are nearly black and the entire image feels monochromatic as a result. Instead of one clearly easily-discernible subject right in the center of the frame there is a morass of shapes poking up from the bottom, all in different states of focus. And an entire section of the frame is so bright it’s probably clipped, with no data to recover even if I wanted to. In other words, from a technical standpoint this photo is probably not great. But from an artistic, creative, and purely Weekly Fifty standpoint, it’s a winner :)

My neighbors across the street own two acres of land, and each year they let about half of their property grow untouched, unmowed, and undisturbed. This simple action, or lack of action, results in a host of flowers, along with tall grass and a great deal of wildlife, taking over the north portion of their yard for a few months. It’s a beautiful sight, and with their permission it also becomes one of my favorite spots to take photos. I particularly enjoy walking around the area in the evening as the sun fades in the distance, camera in hand, to see what photos I can get. Even though I don’t know much about flowers or most things that grow in the ground, I do know a bit about lighting, composition, and photography in general and my neighbor’s yard in the evening is a great place to practice–and hopefully get a few good shots while I’m at it.

Over the years I’ve gotten many photos like this one below, which aren’t super difficult but can still be fun and rewarding.

I shot that a few minutes before I got the actual image I’m featuring this week: all you need to get a photo like it is find a flower, position yourself so that the sun is behind it, dial in your aperture (in this case, f/11), and click the shutter. Bam. Easy, simple, and fun. Nothing wrong with this kind of image at all. But after I shot it I had a sense that I could do better. So I kept walking until I saw another similar flower but with a bit different lighting, and that made all the difference.

Normally when my subjects are backlit I don’t like to actually show the light. Instead I prefer to just show the effects of the subject being lit from behind, such as a glow around the edges and a bit of a sparkle here and there, which you can see in the second image. But in the photo at top you can actually see the sunlight breaking through the trees which makes everything seem significantly more alive, dynamic, and three-dimensional. Instead of a simple flower against a dark background, it’s a flower stretching, almost yearning, for the sunlight which is breaking through the trees like a physical presence in the frame. I underexposed the shot by a bit (Maybe one stop? I forget exactly.) so as to not blow out the highlights, and was left with plenty of data in the shadows that I could lighten to get the light purple to shine through. It was a fantastically enjoyable experiment and I’m glad I kept at it, looking for a new way to photograph a rather mundane subject in a normal everyday setting. There’s a sense of kinetic energy in this photo even though nothing is moving at all, and it gives me some ideas to think about how I might expand my photography beyond the familiar and into new frontiers.

Apparently this is a Red-banded hairstreak, or at least it sure seems to be. Whatever it is I know it’s not the first time I have taken a picture of one of these tiny little animals and probably won’t be the last, partly because these things are all over down here in Oklahoma but also because they are really fun to photograph. I shot this in my own back yard the morning after a downpour–the temps were mild, the humidity was high, the sun was shining low on the horizon, and everything felt refreshed in that way it only can after a thunderstorm rolls through. This butterfly was just kind of hanging out on the leaf of a holly busy, minding its own business and enjoying the day before the sun warmed things up a bit too much. I shot the photo with my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens which meant I had to get pretty close to the subject, but I think the time of day and the post-rain conditions worked in my favor.

I dialed in an aperture of f/13 just to make sure I had plenty of depth of field to work with, focused on its eye, and fired off a couple clicks of the shutter. The result is what you see here, and while I’m pretty happy with it, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something not quite right here. Or maybe just not quite as good as it could be. On a technical level it’s pretty good: sharp, in focus, well-composed, with an interesting subject in a natural (i.e. not artificially-created or posed) state. It’s completely fine. But maybe that’s what I’m having trouble reconciling: it’s fine, but nothing more.

I think what bothers me a bit about this image is that I had hoped to get something much better. I often talk about how overcast mornings, especially after a night of rain, are some of my favorite shooting conditions and so when I grabbed my camera to se what I could find on this particular day I expected…more, I guess. Flowers, perhaps. Or anything with color. Or interesting animals aside from this butterfly which I have photographed many times before. When I see this shot I think I’m a little bummed that it was the best I could do.

But there’s another way to look at this, which is that this is evidence of how far I have come. For example, way back in 2013 I took this image of a similar butterfly resting on some flowers after a rainstorm. I was immensely proud of it at the time, especially since all I had was my 50mm f/1.8 lens mounted to an old Nikon D200, but today’s Weekly Fifty image is superior in nearly every regard. So, it’s clear that I have learned a lot since those early days of my photography, and that’s always a good thing. Even if the image didn’t reach the lofty heights I imagined it might, it’s still a good shot and I can look at it and see what I really have learned a lot about photography over the years. And that’s something worth noting :)

Of all the trees we have here in Oklahoma, the Redbud has become one of my favorites to photograph. Its green leaves take on extraordinary hues of red and yellow early in the yearly life cycle, and the textures highlighted by the morning sun make the valleys and contour of each individual heart-shaped leaf seem almost artificial. It really is something to behold, and it’s no wonder the Redbud is our official state tree. So when I walked past this one early in the morning, just outside my building on the Oklahoma State University campus, I couldn’t help but pause to see if I could capture a photo of it.

I shot this at what is becoming pretty standard fare for me lately: Nikon D750, 105mm macro lens, Auto-ISO with minimum shutter of 1/180 second, and a final exposure of f/11, 1/180, ISO 6400. Lightly edited in Lightroom, including AI Denoise, and just a bit of a crop to reframe slightly. Bam. That’s all there is to it. I sometimes get this weird notion in my head that in order to learn and grow as a photographer I have to be trying new things and pushing myself out of my comfort zone, but that’s not really the case at all. I mean, if that mentality is good for you, then go for it. But sometimes learning and growing is more about practicing and refining instead of constantly trying new things. Kind of like how some basketball players will shoot 10,000 free throws over the course of a summer–not 10,000 different shots, but free throws. Just to refine that skill. While I can’t shoot a basketball I can shoot a camera, and maybe I need to let go of the notion that I should always be trying new things and instead learn that it’s OK to spend time refining something I really want to.

There’s been a bit of a visual theme, or perhaps a sense of continuity and consistency, among many of the photos I have shared lately. The common thread, at least from a purely compositional standpoint, has been that of a subject in the center with blurry lights in the background, usually emanating from street lights far in the distance. I didn’t set out to do this on purpose, but maybe it was some kind of subconscious realization: if I look for photo opportunities just as the sun is coming up, even just between my parking spot and my office, there’s more to be had than I might realize. Neither this, nor any of the similar shots I have shared recently, have been anywhere but right in front of me as I walked the usual sidewalks and paved passageways I use to get to work. And yet, it wasn’t until now that I really took the time to see them in this light, both literally and figuratively. I dunno. Maybe there’s nothing more to see here than just a few flower photos. But maybe there’s also a lesson, one that I have learned over and over and over, about taking the time to see the things that are right in front of you. And that if I have fun taking this kind of photo, then might as well keep doing it. Who knows. I might keep refining and learning along the way :)