Underbrush

One thing I’m enjoying about my Macro lens is looking for photo opportunities close to the ground. Not necessarily finding things that are hidden or unseen, but things that I would normally just kind of overlook on a day-to-day basis. Not that such subjects are inherently more interesting or valuable or special than anything else, but just that it’s kind of fun to see what there is to see at your feet instead of at normal eye level. That’s how I came across this shot, which is some kind of plant (obviously) just poking out from a covering of leaves and wood chips on the south end of the Oklahoma State University campus.

Longtime Weekly Fifty readers know how often I have posted photos that I took while walking around Theta Pond, and this one continues the tradition quite nicely. I took this picture on a warm December afternoon when I needed to get out of my office and stretch my legs for a bit, so I put on a podcast (probably an episode of The Delta Flyers) and grabbed my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens and went for a bit of a stroll. As usual I just sort of ended up at the pond because it’s one of my favorite spots on campus, and noticed a patch of these brown-colored plants and thought I might be able to get a good shot of them.

One thing I’m still learning about my macro lens is how to effectively utilize and manipulate the aperture of my lens to get the shot I want. The 105mm focal length lets me get very close to subjects which means I have to be very careful when shooting wide open. Not necessarily for sharpness, but for depth of field–though sharpness too, but kind of as a byproduct of DOF since this lens is really sharp even wide open. I put my camera on the ground, flipped out the rear screen, set the aperture to f/8, focused on the red leaf in the center, and took a few photos.

No good. Depth of field was simply too shallow.

I ended up with an aperture of f/16 which I almost never shoot at on my 50mm lens, but I’m finding is much more reasonable on this macro lens than shooting at f/4 or f/2.8. I really like the colors, the leaves in the foreground, the white-and-brown background, and the overall mood and tone of this shot. It just feels like autumn and yet, also feels like something new and exciting is just around the corner too.