Simon

While I don’t know much about the plants, flowers, trees, and other things that grow here in Oklahoma, I do know that each spring there are a few things that consistently, year after year, make for excellent photo opportunities: Indian Paintbrush flowers, Magnolia seed pods, and Redbud leaves among them. And when you combine any or all of the above with a bit of rain, overcast skies, and midmorning sun hiding just behind the gray haze overhead, it adds up to some positively splendid photo opportunities. The result of which you can see here–no AI image-generation trickery here, folks. Just light, physics, and being in the right place at the right time to capture the Lord’s creative handiwork.

As with some of the other picture I have shared here recently, this was taken at the OSU Botanic Gardens on the west side of town one rainy morning. I had my Nikon D750 and 105mm lens which is already kind of a magical combination in its own right, but when paired with the aforementioned weather conditions, it’s almost difficult to not get some good pictures. The trick with this week’s image was getting a couple things to line up just how I wanted them and, I think, they did.

First, the subject: I was really hoping to get a single yellow leaf isolated against a background of its purple brethren (the former simply being a more mature version of the latter, which will itself turn fully green in a day or two) in order to create a sense of contrast and subject isolation. That is, I was hoping to get the yellow leaf to stand out from the purple leaves. Since I couldn’t really manipulate the objects within the scene, I had to manipulate my point of view instead, and in the end it worked out pretty well. Could I have moved slightly to the left or right in order to get a nice uniform purple background taking up the entire right side of the frame? Perhaps. Though doing so would have made the second thing a lot more difficult.

After finding a general angle from which to compose the shot, I then set out to get much more specific with the depth of field. That is, I wanted the entire leaf to be sharp and in focus, and even shooting at f/8 this proved to be more than a little tricky. If I adjusted my angle ever so slightly, it would put one side of the leaf or the other in focus while its counterpart would be a blur. Remember that depth of field when taking close-up shots like this is a matter of millimeters, not inches, and altering your point of view by a single degree can make a big difference in the outcome of the shot.

Then again, another solution is to just take a boat-load of photos and hope one turns out. Is that what I did here? Well…perhaps. Maybe. I dunno.

Ok, so yes that’s exactly what I did. And you know what? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that approach at all. There were simply too many variables in an uncontrolled shooting situation to create the perfect composition, and one of the best ways to deal with that kind of scenario is to just take lots and lots of pictures. Sports photographers know this and do it all the time; why not nature photographers?

Aside from the sharp subject, I’m also quite pleased with how the other elements come together in this image: the little blip of light purple on the left, the yellow leaves nearly at the edge of the frame on the right, the variations between light and dark in the background, and even the little drop of water at the bottom of the lowest leaf. These all come together to form an image with which I am well pleased, and I hope you like it too.

My normal go-to when it comes to most photography is pretty basic: one single subject, clear and in focus, with additional content in the background, foreground, or both, for a sense of time, place and context. This week’s photo, as you can see, breaks that formula in a couple of ways. It was something a little different for me to try, and while I’m not entirely certain about the result, it was fun and I got to get a little creative along the way which I always enjoy.

I shot this picture when I was visiting the local botanic garden on a rainy morning, and had my D750 and 105mm macro lens with me for any photography opportunities I happened to spot along the way. I originally just kind of passed by this flowering plant without thinking too much about it, and also because it was really low to the ground which would have required some odd contortions in order to get an interesting picture. The more I thought about it though, the more I decided to use it as a bit of a challenge and a chance to try something a bit different.

I squatted down on my heels, knees bent, and held my camera out in front of me with Live View enabled and the screen flipped out so I could see it. Newer mirrorless cameras with modern autofocus systems would have had no trouble with this at all, but on a decade-old DSLR with contrast-detect autofocus when composing in Live View, it’s a different story entirely. Thankfully there was no wind and the only real problem I had was my own body wiggling back and forth as I held my camera out. I compensated for this by shooting at f/8 instead of a wider aperture, which would have been possible since all these flowers are basically on the same focal plane, and making sure vibration reduction was enabled on my camera lens. I lined up the shot such that the background was uniformly dark to help make the flowers stand out as much as possible, and tried to get the whole cluster in the frame and not cut off anything on the top or left side. I did end up cropping just a bit in Lightroom, but overall I think it worked out quite well: the light was even, the petals are glistening in the rain, and the vacant background isn’t really a problem. If anything, having other things in front or behind would probably do more to distract the viewer than enhance the photo, and I think the end result works out just fine. It even gives me a few ideas of what I might try with other images too.

There’s something more to this photo that you can’t really tell by just looking at it–a story that explains the reason I took it, and why it means a bit more to me than what you might expect.

We have been visiting our local botanic gardens for years, probably as far back as when we first moved to town in 2009. It’s a great place to relax, unwind, walk among nature, find some geocaches, and of course, take photos. This might sound like a bit of a cliché but it’s true: no matter whether you’re a kid, an adult, a college student, or even a pet, there’s always something fun to see or do at the botanic garden. They have several artificial features too such as benches, sidewalks, a giant chess board, a pond, some fountains, and even an O-Gauge model train set with a sign that says “Platform 9 ¾”.

One of the more popular installations over the years is that of a swing hanging from a tree branch. It’s perfect for kids, or even teens and some adults, to pass the time while out walking around. For years the swing was attached to the tree by two thick loops of woven nylon, much like what you would find on a seat belt, which, while functional, had the unfortunate side effect of rubbing the bark off the tree branch. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people (including my own two children) enjoyed that swing though over time the toll it took on the tree really became noticeable. About five years ago I approached the director of the botanic garden to ask if I could make a bit of a change to how the swing was mounted to make it a better experience for those who used it and also the tree. She agreed, and a week later I showed up at the garden with my drill, a half-inch auger-style bit, and two gigantic eye bolts.

As a local arborist explained to me when we were putting some swings on the tree in our own back yard a decade ago, it’s better to drill through a tree branch and insert a straight rod or eye bolt rather than put a loop of rope, chain, or nylon around a tree branch. The former will allow the tree to heal itself over time and eventually create an even stronger mount for the swing as it grows around the hardware. The latter will essentially do the opposite, and choke the branch by restricting the flow of sap as it grows over time. It didn’t take long for me to get the nylon straps removed, the eye bolts installed, and the swing re-hung and ready to go for years to come.

And that’s exactly how things went: every time we visited the botanic garden after I re-did the swing mount we saw it being used like before, but the tree branch healing itself where so much of its bark had been stripped away. However, when I stopped by the swing on my recent rainy day photography excursion at the botanic garden I was a little surprised to see that it was gone. It had been removed, possibly because it had simply worn out from use, or perhaps to limit liability after someone had fallen off. The eye bolts were still poking through the tree branch, but instead of a normal-sized swing for adults and kids there was only this small fairy alighting on a leaf, which itself was hanging from one of the metal circles above.

I was surprised, of course, but not really sad about it. That’s how things go–change, as they say, is the only constant in this world. While I’m going to miss seeing the swing hanging from the tree when we go to the garden from now on, I do like that the hardware I installed is being put to good use. Who knows, maybe this fairy will be joined by another one on the other eye bolt. Or perhaps something else will come along and take her place. Who knows. In the end I’m just glad I had the opportunity to help out the botanic garden patrons for a little while, and now, take a picture of this fairy enjoying her perch from up above.

This is one of those pictures that seems kind of simple at first glance, but was actually a lot more difficult to create than it might appear. Well, perhaps difficult isn’t really the right term…maybe thoughtful? In-depth? I guess what I’m trying to say is, there’s more to this than meets the eye. I took it on a rainy day at the botanic gardens here in town, and made several creative choices that ultimately ended up with the specific shot you see. Nothing here is an accident, and while I didn’t spend a great deal of time on this, I couldn’t have taken this picture without years of practice, patience, and self-reflection, and I am very happy with how it turned out.

First, the flower itself. There were several in the small patch of…tulips?…that were in various state of unfurling; this one, still wrapped upon itself, presented the best opportunity from a photographic point of view. I fully recognize and acknowledge that my compositions are usually not complicated: one single easily-identifiable subject against a blurry background. It’s not groundbreaking, but it usually gets pretty good results, and those kinds of photos are, in my opinion, a lot of fun to take. That was the case here, and the reason I selected this specific flower among all the available options. I then positioned myself such that it would be isolated from any other flowers around it–notice how the subject is neatly contained between the two other flowers just to the right and to the left, in front of a relatively dark background that makes it easy to see. Had I moved myself an inch to either side, the picture would be completely different and probably not in a good way.

There’s other compositional elements at work here that help create the specific scene I wanted: the green blade extending through the frame alongside the flower, the out-of-focus leaves on the right, the glistening texture of the flower thanks to an f/8 aperture (in other words, depth of field was kept under control), and the direction of light to top it all off. I shot this with the sun above and in front of me, instead of behind me, which meant that the scene was backlit and, as a result, making the flower sparkle and shine while also giving a bit of a glowing effect to some of the dark areas on the top right.

I also used a tool in Lightroom that Adobe released about a year ago: AI-Powered Denoise. Normally I’m quite skeptical of most things AI-related, but this one serves a singular purpose and the results are pretty great. Instead of applying a blanket denoise algorithm to the entire photo, the software does some kind of behind-the-scenes analysis to figure out what parts of the image should be processed to remove noise and grain, what shouldn’t and how much to apply the denoise as well. I used it in this image to clean up the noise behind the flower and it turned out great. I’ve used this tool off and on since it became available, and it’s probably the kind of thing that I will continue to use and experiment with over time.

Springtime rainy days are among my favorite kinds of weather for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they make for exceptional photo opportunities. I have written about this extensively here on Weekly Fifty but it continues to hold true: it’s almost difficult to not get good photos on cloudy, overcast days during, or just after, a good soaking. Mornings and evenings are also good due to the light being low in the sky, and when you combine all of the above… *chef’s kiss* That’s how the underlying conditions unfolded when I set out to take this picture, and the results played out almost exactly as one would expect.

On a recent rainy morning I drove out to to the OSU Botanic Gardens on the west side of town, camera in hand, with the specific intention of taking several pictures of whatever I might find: leaves, flowers, decorations…the Gardens are always changing and, in many ways, you never know what you’re gonna get. This scene was the first thing I came upon after exiting my vehicle so I figured I might as well give it a try and see what happened. (One nice thing about digital photography compared to its analog counterpart is that you don’t have to save your shots for when you really need them. If you see something, you might as well take a picture, and even if something better comes along, you’re not really sacrificing anything.)

One of the trickiest parts of photographing a scene like this is trying to figure out what to focus on: the buds, the branches, the bubble…everything all at once with focus stacking? There’s a lot of choices but, generally speaking, you can’t go wrong with trying to get the bubble tack sharp and let the rest of the photographic chips fall where they may. It’s often the brightest part of the composition and, as a result, the element that the viewer’s eye is naturally drawn to, which makes it kind of a good general baseline to shoot for. It’s not always easy though: autofocus is not super reliable in these situations, and if your aperture is too wide the depth of field can quickly become downright unwieldy. But when it works, it sure does work.

I shot this at f/13 to get a pretty large depth of field, while ironically remembering that when I purchased my macro lens I kept wondering if f/2.8 would be wide enough. (In reality I almost never use f/2.8 because it’s almost always too wide when doing close-up photography, but that’s just one of those things you learn with time and experience.) I always use back-button focus which made this shot a lot easier: I took a handful of shots while rotating the focus ring, knowing I would get some that were sharp and plenty that were not. No matter though, that’s what large memory cards are for :) I also kept the background in mind, adjusting my point of view so that the drop of water was set not against the light gray sky but the rich green grass on the berm behind. The rain gives everything a glossy shimmer that simply doesn’t happen on any other kind of day, and in the end I was pleased to get this and many other pictures which you’ll be seeing here on Weekly Fifty in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them.