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

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times: overcast rainy days are ideal for photography, and this was shown to be true yet again the morning I took this picture. (Though I suppose you could make the argument that, given your unique style of photography, any number of other weather conditions would suit you better…but for me a an overcast and/or rainy day is the bee’s knees.) Couple the weather with a macro setup, whether true macro lens or close-up filter, and you’re good to go. That’s what happened here anyway, and what you are seeing is yet another attempt to capture the ever-elusive drop-on-a-leaf picture I have been striving for ever since I got my close-up filters. As often happens I was not seeking this specific image in particular, but happened to come across this scene as I was out with my camera one rainy morning and could hardly go on without at least attempting a shot. And I’m sure glad I did.

Though I have made a few images like this before, what I found unique to this particular setup is the fact that the big drop in the center is not really the focus of attention. Rather, it is the small image of what is being reflected in the drop that I wanted to try to highlight and all in all I think it worked out fairly well. You can’t really tell from the small image preview here but if you click through to the full-sized image on Flickr you will see that the bright white streak on the lower-left portion of the drop in the center is actually a reflection of the sky above, and what looks like the webbings on a leaf is actually the pattern created by tree limbs high above as they stretch across the clouds. This was an intentional choice on my part, and I spent a few minutes carefully focusing not really on the big drop of water but in such a way so as to get the reflection to be tack sharp.

I used my D7100 + 50mm combo to get this shot (f/8, 1/250 second, ISO 140), and screwed a +10 filter on to the end, and what I’m learning after using this setup over the past few months is just how enjoyable it is even though it’s not technically a true macro rig. I don’t have an actual macro lens, and a few filters are kind of a poor approximation of what’s required to get real high quality close-up images, but at the end of the day I’m having so much fun taking these types of shots that I just don’t care :) Whether you’re posting cell phone shots to Instagram or making fine art prints for galleries, the point is to get out there and shoot the photos you want and hopefully enjoy yourself in the process.

So…you know how last week I wrote about how going down to the pond to take photos of ducks and other waterfowl was almost like cheating? Well, here we go again! This is a squirrel right near Theta Pond on campus, and just like last week part of me feels like this picture shouldn’t even count because shots like this are almost too easy to get. My coworker and I went for a walk around the pond and she spotted this fella munching on some kind of nut or acorn, and as usual I had my camera with me which was, thankfully, my D7100 and not my D750 so I had the advantage of a little extra reach with the crop sensor. Squirrels near the pond are so used to people that they barely bat an eye when you walk past them which makes images like this seem almost a bit unfair because it’s not like this required hours of waiting or any real work whatsoever. But still, just like last week’s picture of a duck, I rather like this picture even if it is somewhat derivative. It was fun to take and I like the way it’s composed, so I’m posting it here because I can :)

I shot this at f/1.8 which regular readers know is something I generally avoid, but since I knew I wouldn’t be able to get super duper close to the squirrel I wanted to make the most out of whatever I had and try to get a shallow depth of field if at all possible. Even though the resulting image isn’t as zoom-in-to-a-hundred-percent tack-sharp as I would like, using the wide aperture gave me the bokelicious background I was going for and helped focus the viewer right on the eyes and face of the squirrel.

One weird thing happened as I was taking this photo, which I hope is not an indicator of a larger problem that might be down the road: my lens refused to autofocus, at least at first. I tried a few different options on the camera and checked that the lens was in M/A mode, but nothing worked. I was getting a little antsy because I thought this squirrel might hightail it outta there and I was in danger of missing what might be a really nice photo, so I quickly took a few shots while focusing manually. Then I took the lens off, put it back on, and everything worked just fine at which point I got the shot you see here. Much to my surprise though, the manually-focused images actually looked decent. Not great, but not bad either, and if I would have shot at f/2.8 or f/4 they probably would have been just fine. The takeaway for me was that I need to take a cue from the US Coast Guard: semper paratus. Always be prepared. If I had taken the time to double check my gear I would have fixed the problem before it even became a problem. Thankfully all’s well that ends well and I’m treating this as a lesson in what to make sure I do the next time :)

I used to teach English at Meadow Creek Christian School (now called Legacy Christian Academy) in Andover, Minnesota, and one thing I stressed to my students who were struggling with narrative-style writing is to start by simply writing what they know. Using our own lives as a backdrop for writing stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, is a fantastic way to help bring out our inner authors. Tolkien used his experiences in World War I as the backdrop for the conflicts in his Lord of the Rings tales. Michael Crichton imparted his extensive knowledge of science and medicine into his many books, movies, and television shows which he had a hand in creating. Even John Grisham, purveyor of many of the most popular legal thrillers today, began his career as an author only after practicing law for ten years and then used that as the basis for his creative works.

What I’m getting at here is that sometimes it’s good to branch out into new and unexplored territories, but sometimes it’s nice to stick with what you know. There’s nothing wrong with treading in familiar waters—how often did you see Bob Ross do cubist-style paintings or try his hand at marble sculptures? And that’s what’s happening in this picture of a relatively normal white duck. There’s a small pond on the OSU campus that is a favorite spot for me and many of our students and faculty, and even though it’s somewhat cliché to wander down there and take photos of the animals…well, who cares? I still like doing it. It’s not groundbreaking or earth-shattering, but pictures of the geese and ducks are fun and can often be challenging too, especially when shooting with a 50mm lens because the animals, despite their familiarity with humans, still like to keep a healthy distance.

On this particular afternoon my friend Gina had brought some duck food along while we went on a short walk around the pond (apparently the stuff is super cheap! She bought 40 pounds of it from a local farm supply store for about $7) and it was fun to see the waterfowl overcome their trepidation and get very up close and personal with us while we fed them. I had my D750 with me so I used the opportunity to take some pictures, and you know what? I like this one and don’t even care that there are probably ten thousand others just like it. Taking this picture made me smile and it’s a fun little reminder of how there is nothing wrong with just doing what works.

This photo honestly took me by surprise just a little bit. On a warm Sunday afternoon in July my wife and I were at the local botanic gardens with our two boys and as they played with one of the exhibits (some kind of hand-operated water pump connected to a trough and an underground storage tank) and we wandered around talking while looking at the local flora. It was one of those lazy, relaxing kind of days where there is no real agenda other than to get out and enjoy nature and we wanted to take advantage before it got too sunny. Soon our boys migrated to a spot within a grove of trees containing a few interactive art pieces to play with, so we went with and played along while snapping a couple pictures just for the fun of it.

As we were getting ready to head back to the car I spotted this tiny winged woodland lady frolicking among the branches, and crept in close to get a better look. She was kind enough to hover silently while I drew near with my D750 + 50mm lens, and turned a few pirouettes while I snapped some pictures. I didn’t want to disturb her lest she cry out for Oberon or Puck to come to her rescue but I did linger long enough get about a dozen photos before retreating to the outside world. Her slow twirling made it somewhat difficult to get the images I was looking for, and what I ended up with is actually not at all what I intended at the outset. I thought it would be fun to get a picture of her on the left side of the frame while also angled slightly so as to possibly show a bit of movement, and while I did in fact get that picture I did not really like it much:

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Looking at the photos in Lightroom I realized that her slightly skewed composure made her look strangely distorted, and the extrusion of this two-dimensional shape in order to add depth only served to make such a picture look strange and even a bit disconcerting. I had about a dozen images just like this one but fortunately I also managed to capture one–and only one–of this little lady directly from the side which is what I ended up using as this week’s featured photo. I shot it at f/4 which, thanks to my full-frame camera, gave me the equivalent depth of field as if I had shot this at f/2.8 on a crop sensor camera and resulted in a very pleasing composition overall.

I thought it was cool to see this little scene in the gardens on that day, and it made me think of how we often decorate Christmas trees with similar trinkets and tchotchkes but put them away once the season passes. Why do we do that? Why not add a bit of life and inspire a sense of wonder in the world around us by adding special charms like this to our yards during the rest of the year? It seems like a fun activity to do, and I think I’m going to try to get on this with my own kiddos and find ways of adding a little extra spark of life to the natural world outside our house and the world around us.

Ah, the classic sunstar-from-behind-a-building photo. It’s one I’ve done many times before and yet it continues to be the type of picture I really enjoy revisiting. When I took this I had no special intention of making the particular picture you see here but I’m quite happy with how it all turned out. At the time I shot this I was running an errand at work and, as I often do, I brought my camera with me. On this occasion it was my D750 + 50mm combo which I knew would give me a little wider field of view than my D7100, so when I saw the sun poking out from behind the stairwell on a parking garage I thought it might make for a slightly more interesting photo than I would normally get with my crop sensor D7100. For me the biggest consideration here was of a compositional nature: there were three elements at play, and I had to decide how I wanted them to all interact within the frame. The parking garage, the sky, and the sun all come together to form a cohesive whole, and I had to figure out where I would stand and point my camera in order to get the shot I was looking for. (FYI, nothing here was cropped. What you see is what I got.)

Ironically the first thing I decided was the aperture of my lens; when shooting a starburst like this you need to stop your lens down quite a bit to get the light to make that cool star pattern which usually requires something around f/11 to f/16. I set my camera to f/13 and moved around until I could just barely see the sun poking out from behind the roof of the stairwell, which is key for a shot like this. If you point your camera straight at the sun you will just get a giant overexposed blob, so you have to get just a bit of the sun peeking out from behind something else like a tree or building.

After deciding my aperture I tried a couple different places to stand that would still show a bit of the sun and took a grand total of five images from slightly different angles. The sky was actually quite overcast which meant I was able to pull out a great deal of blue color detail in Lightroom that would have normally been way, way too overexposed to salvage and I also used the Healing brush to take out about a half dozen little brown spots on the concrete side of the structure.

To me this picture is somewhat of an exercise in how to convey a sense of size or create a particular mood, as well as a reminder of how much I have grown as a photographer in the last several years. If I had made this image in 2012 I would have taken 50 shots from all sorts of angles and tried all kinds of different settings, but here I only took five and it was over in less than a minute. These days I have a much better idea of how to control my camera to get the shot I want, and I try to avoid taking dozens and dozens of photos of the same scene to get that one perfect shot. There is no such thing as the perfect image, and instead I try to get photos that I like and with which I am well pleased, and then go back to my life. That’s what happened here and I hope you like this shot too :)