Strength and Peace

Most of the photos I share here on Weekly Fifty are a bit more natural than this. That is, they are just objects without words and the viewer is allowed to draw his or her own conclusion or infer whatever meaning they prefer. This shot is a bit different, as there’s clearly a message being conveyed—albeit not necessarily by me, since I didn’t put this decoration on the branch. I merely came across the scene while out walking around the OSU campus one cold December afternoon, and used it as an opportunity to practice my photography.

I had my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens, which at this point has basically supplanted my Fuji X100F as my favorite camera kit for artistic shots such as this one. (The Fuji remains my camera of choice when photographing the people in my life, so much that it continues to be the only camera I take with on most of our trips to see family.) When I saw this two-piece ichthus-and-message metal ornament, each one about the size of a quarter, dangling from the brown branch I thought it would make for a compelling picture while also giving me a chance to experiment with a few different angles from which to capture the written portion.

At first I shot it head-on, but quickly realized that was, as Vader said to Luke Skywalker in Cloud City, all too easy. It just didn’t feel interesting or dynamic, and even cheapened the message a bit. I spent a few minutes shooting it from a bit higher, a bit lower, and from both the left and right sides while also experimenting with various apertures on my lens. The shot you see here ended up as my favorite, and I like how there’s just a bit of blur to the near and far part of the message. I’m a little unsure about the bright reflective surface of the ichthus or, rather, the circle containing the ichthus, and I did use Lightroom to lower the highlights in an attempt to salvage a bit of color and texture. It didn’t work as well as I had hoped, but it’s not that bad either. In the end I’m fine with how this turned out and, as usual, I’m just treating it as a learning opportunity. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but it’s not too bad either. And to whoever placed this trinket on the branch, thank you. I’m glad you feel blessed, and I hope others do as well :)