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

Twelve years ago I used my old Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8 lens to take this picture of some mushrooms outside my office at work. While it might seem kind of unremarkable to take a photo of a lump of fungus protruding from the ground, I’ve learned that these kinds of scenes are pretty cool; I quite enjoy these photo opportunities when they come about. Maybe it’s because of the fleeting nature of these small helmeted white stalks–they show up and disappear often within the span of a single day. It might also be related to the wet, rainy, overcast weather conditions in which mushrooms are most likely to appear which also just so happen to be ideal for the kinds of photos I like to take. In any case, I really like taking pictures of mushrooms.

The thing about these kinds of shots, though, is that you can’t always plan them out in advance. Or, if you can, I sure haven’t learned how to do it. Case in point: the image featured today. I went out to trim some tree branches on a humid morning after a night of rain, and came across a couple small, domed, white stalks that had popped up overnight. I didn’t even think about mushrooms when I grabbed the ladder and loppers, but after the branches were pruned I ran inside, grabbed my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens, and went back out to see if I could get a couple shots. Turns out, I did.

Unlike most other photos I share here on Weekly Fifty, this one was a bit unique in that I had a great deal of options available to me in terms of overall composition. Since the lighting was overcast and fairly even, and since I had plenty of room to maneuver, I basically circled it and took pictures from many different vantage points. There really weren’t any constraints, which meant I could use any of the available backgrounds I wanted: trees, houses, fences, etc. My favorite ended up being what you see here: a break in the trees filled with bright spots of light, with the rest of the frame occupied by grass with the mushroom rising like a spire right in the center. I vacillated between f/13 and f/19, opting for the latter in the final shot due to more overall sharpness and less depth of field, while still making the foreground and background elements plenty blurry. It’s one of those odd, slightly counterintuitive rules I continue to learn when shooting with my macro lens: less (depth of field) often does equal more (impactful compositions).

I hope to continue taking photos of mushrooms when I get the chance–that is, on warm rainy days in the early morning, preferably in my own back, front, or side yard. They are immensely satisfying, and there’s something kind of fun about the ephemeral nature of such subjects: here today, gone tomorrow, maybe one day to reappear…and hopefully when a photographer has camera in hand to capture them.

If there’s one thing you can count on for Weekly Fifty, it’s that pretty much every year, at some point, you’ll come across a picture that looks something like this. It’s my sort-of annual (I mean, I don’t specifically go out of my way to do this each year but, as Calvin said, these things just seem to happen) image of an Indian Paintbrush flower–which is the colloquial name for these here in Oklahoma though, as the title suggests, they are members of the Figwort family and carry several other names as well. It might seem somewhat self-indulgent to post a picture like this each year (and again, it’s not like I do this on purpose) but at the end of the day…I just like these flowers. Are they invasive? I guess. Are they a nuisance? Depends on who you ask. Are they pretty, especially if you can capture them at dawn or dusk? Most definitely. And, as far as criteria that matters most for this particular context…are they fun to photograph? As they say up north, yah you betcha.

I remember years ago taking shots of these flowers with my little ol’ 50mm f/1.8 lens on a crop sensor D7100 or D200, and being struck at how brilliant they looked especially in the right light. The one featured today is no exception, and while I now usually use a macro lens on a full-frame camera, the basic idea is kind of the same: center the subject in the frame, and use background elements such as grass, trees, and sky for color, contrast, and of course, context. I took this in my neighbor’s field one evening as the sun was settting, and while it’s not going to win any awards for creativity, it’s one of those images that I just…enjoy. Top to bottom, start to finish, this was a fun photo to take and a nice one to look at. All the elements are there: rich reds, deep greens, dark trees in the background, bright spots of sky sneaking through near the top, and a nice level of detail too thanks to the f/13 aperture and decent distance between lens and subject. There’s even a bit of foreground action too, with a single blade of grass slicing diagonally across the shot. If you look closely you can see other interesting bits and bobs too, like another flower on the right and something shiny in the top-left (honestly not sure with that one. Perhaps just a gap in the trees?) or you can just…not look closely at all and enjoy the picture for what it is.

Most of the time I find myself using Weekly Fifty to stretch, learn, and grow as a photographer–something I talk about quite often, in fact. But there are also times when it’s really more of a pleasant, gentle nudge to myself–a reminder to take that camera down from the shelf, go outside, and see what wonders I might find. And sometimes the simplicity of those scenarios, and the mere act of taking the photo, are some of the best reasons to be a photographer.

I shot this in my neighbor’s field, the same location where I have taken many flower photos over the years, at the tail end of a good, long day of rain. The ground, grass, trees, and every conceivable surface was saturated after the hours-long drenching and I thought these conditions, along with waning daylight, would give me one or two good photo opportunities. I didn’t have anything specific in mind other than to capture an composition that felt like the scene I was seeing. I walked around among the grass for a while, my feet in sandals growing ever-more damp while the slightest drizzle continued to fall all around me, and soon came across the purple flower you see above. That’s when I knew I had something I could work with.

To be clear, I usually don’t attempt to impart any meaning in my images in the metaphorical sense. This flower doesn’t represent anything, and the colors, shooting conditions, or any other element of the shot is not meant to speak to a deeper meaning or draw any sort of comparison. But art is subjective, and meaning is intensely personal, so feel free to take from this what you will. You could look at the bright purple, slightly off center, and imagine as the title implies: a sense of sadness, fading glory, or better things behind. Alternatively, one would be equally justified in taking from this scene a sense of hope and renewal, cleansing and clarity, and imagine the flower functioning as a commentary on the broader human condition. Personally, all I see here is…well, a flower dripping with precipitation after a rainstorm. But you get to take from this whatever you want, and your interpretation and understanding is just as valid as anything I might express, having no less value for want of clicking the shutter yourself.

But, as the saying goes, I digress. That’s part of the fun though :) I shot this with my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, with nary a weather seal in sight I might add, and dialed in an aperture of f/11, Auto-ISO set to minimum shutter of 1/200, and final ISO value of 640. In terms of technical composition the flower sits neatly along the left-hand vertical third, just like you might see in a Beginner’s Guide to Taking Photos textbook; it’s not going to win points for creativity, but gosh darnit, it just works and that’s alright with me. If I have any regrets about this shot it’s that I didn’t use just a slightly smaller aperture: the lower-most raindrop is in focus, but the front-facing petal is just slightly blurry. I could have mitigated that if only I had used f/13, but that’s how it goes in photography, and instead of looking back I’m instead going to look forward and try to adjust my settings a bit for the next time I find myself in this kind of situation.

Because if we’re not learning and growing, we’re stagnating, and that is not a situation in which I intend to find myself.

Last week I might have been a little uncharacteristically hard on myself, or harsh in my assessment of the photo, but one conclusion I kept returning to was that I knew I could do better. Or, maybe, that I was certain there was a better photo buried beneath the layers of overexposed yellows and odd white balance issues but I was somewhat stymied by the RAW file since I couldn’t quite make it look like how I saw the scene in real life. However, if that image was a bit far to one side of the spectrum, this week’s photo hopefully rectifies the situation or at least balances things out. This picture of a typically-purple coneflower was shot in essentially the same location (that being the bison topiary on the east side of the OSU campus) in similar conditions, but it’s a significantly better photo by any measure that I can think of. Basically, if I expressed a sense of frustration at last week’s shot because I thought I could do better, this week’s photo is me demonstrating that I can.

While I usually prefer to evaluate images on their own merits, in this case I think it’s helpful to compare this directly to its counterpart–if that one went so wrong, why did this work out so well? The first thing to consider is the lighting. I shot the first one in the morning just as the sun was coming up when other sources of light, such as street lamps and car headlights, were still present and had a meaningful impact on the scene. I think, though I’m not entirely certain, that’s what led to the odd color cast and the reason I couldn’t quite nail the color balance when editing the RAW file. The varied light sources were competing with each other and, as a result, creating a weird mix of kelvin temperatures which made the oranges, yellows, greens, and violets collide instead of collaborate. This week’s photo was taken much later in the day when the only source of light was the sun, diffused through a layer of clouds and further scattered by drops of rain. While that meant there were no bright bokeh balls in the background, the overall lighting is much more even and brings out the rich hues of purple, red, and violet in the flower.

Another element of this photo that serves to make it a success, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the single clearly-defined subject as opposed to multiple flowers flowing vertically through the frame. Perhaps this is more of a personal stylistic preference than a broader, more universally-applicable, rule but as far as I’m concerned (and it’s my photo, and my blog, so…) the one purple coneflower taking up most of the frame, with added elements for context, makes this a stronger and more visually striking image.

The last major element that elevates this well beyond last week’s image is the significant increase in overall sharpness. Aside from a cold, clinical evaluation of the flower itself, which shows much more sharpness and detail in today’s image, the rest of the photo is sharp where it both sharp and blurry exactly where it should be. What I mean by that is, the out-of-focus elements of the earlier image (the front petals of the coneflower, the flowers on either side, the background, etc.) have an odd, almost artificial look to them that feels wrong somehow. It’s all captured in-camera, but the f/4.8 aperture ended up creating a weaker composition due to extremely shallow depth of field. Today’s image, by comparison, is far better largely due to the f/22 aperture and, as a result, depth of field being much more controlled and intentional. It’s sharp where it should be, blurry where it should be, and everything just works the way I like it.

If there’s one area I would improve in today’s composition it would be to reorient myself, if I were to travel back in time and re-shoot it, such that the secondary coneflower in the background would be positioned a little more to the left and, as a result, not intrude on the subject. It’s a minor thing though, and doesn’t really weaken the image but instead gives me something to remember for next time I find myself in this spot with these flowers.

There’s something not quite right about this photo. From a compositional standpoint I think it’s great, with a colorful coneflower right in the center, two more furled flowers framing it on either side, and some blurry spots far in the background adding a splash of light as well as depth. Not bad, right? But beyond all of that lies one critical problem: the colors are…off. The yellow petals are too bright, the purple center of the flower has a weird tin to it, the green stems on the sides are kind of pale and sickly, and the entire composition seems like it was over-processed by a bad mobile phone filter. It almost makes my eyes hurt just to look at it, and yet, here it is–featured as this week’s photo here on Weekly Fifty. So what’s the deal?

To start with, let’s take a look at the original RAW. Or, rather, a screenshot of the “Before” view in Lightroom, with relevant metadata in the top left corner.

It’s an odd amalgamation of colors, with the purple top of the flower sticking out like a sore thumb–literally. It’s the color of a skin bruise, and I don’t exactly mean that as a compliment. The orange and yellow petals in the foreground are overexposed, and the entire image has sickly pallor to it that I find strange and, to be honest, a bit disconcerting. No matter though, these kinds of issues are easily remedied when shooting in RAW…or so I thought. However, when I imported this into Lightroom and started working with the usual set of sliders, nothing really seemed to work. I couldn’t get the white balance right. The yellows were uncooperative. Even the cropping wasn’t working out. No matter what I did with the whites/blacks/highlights/shadows it just didn’t give me any good results and the color grading, saturation, vibrance…nothing worked!

I often get to the point in my editing where I feel like I’ve got a result that’s good enough and I don’t really want to work with the image anymore. Most of the it’s because I’m happy with the result and any adding minutes or hours of additional tweaking won’t really pay off by giving me that much of a better result. But in this case I honestly just kind of gave up. I don’t know what happened, but something about the original composition did just not lend itself to a final finished product.

So I’m sharing it here not because it’s a great image, but because it’s an example of my learning process as a photographer. Even though in a cold, objective, mathematical sense all the stars lined up just right with this one…from an artistic standpoint it didn’t work out at all. And that’s OK. Sometimes it’s good to have those kinds of images; they can teach us a lot more than we might realize.