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

One night in September after the kids went to bed my wife came into the kitchen where I was doing some dishes, and with an excited look on her face she said “I’ve got a photo opportunity for you!” The last time she said this sort of thing it resulted in this picture, so I quickly grabbed my camera and followed her into the garage where she had been putting away some of the kids’ toys. We carefully crept around to the back of our vehicle where she pointed at a small praying mantis perched at the top of the wheel well, and I immediately realized why she was so pleased with her find. I don’t think I have ever seen a mantis up close and personal except for a nature conservatory, and was thrilled to find one just sort of hanging out and relaxing right in our garage. I smiled like a kid on Christmas morning and she said “I’ll leave you to it” so I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get a good picture of the little insect.

The first thing I did was put on a +4 filter as I knew I would want to get closer to the mantis, but not so close as to obscure all its features. A +10 filter would have been overkill while a +2 wouldn’t have done much at all, and sure enough the +4 worked admirably. The light in our garage was fairly dim and I didn’t want to open the door because the creature might see that as an opportunity to exit the premises, so I grabbed a flashlight and set it on the floor about a meter away from the mantis with the head angled up so as to provide a bit of light. My 50mm lens was on my D7100 so I took a few shots with that but soon switched over to my D750 because I was shooting at such high ISO values in the dim light, and I also wanted to take advantage of its highlight-weighted metering system to help get the right exposure. More on that in a bit.

The situation presented a compositional challenge right from the get-go because it was more than a little awkward to position myself in a way that would allow me to even get a decent picture. I wanted to get the eyes and face of the mantis in focus which meant I had to shoot from below, but with my 50mm lens and filter I had to be somewhat close to the bug as well. I ended up lying on my back and propping myself up with one elbow while holding my camera against my eye with the other hand and scooting around until I had at least somewhat of a decent composition. It wasn’t the most comfortable way of shooting, but it did give me a composition that was at least decently close to what I was going for.

As for the metering system, I knew that with my flashlight providing most of the light for the mantis it was going to be tricky for my camera to figure out the exposure values to use since some parts of the scene (like the bug’s face) were so bright and others were so dark. The D750’s highlight-weighted mode basically looks at the entire scene and figures out which parts are the brightest, and then adjusts the exposure accordingly so those bright spots look normal. It’s a mode that I don’t use very often, but is super handy when I need it such as a situation in which there is a praying mantis hanging out above my car tire :) I could have also just shot the picture normally and then used exposure compensation to dial things down a bit so the mantis wasn’t so blown out, but the other method worked fine so I went with that.

When I was finally satisfied that I got the shot I was looking for I called my wife back in the garage where we opened the door and coaxed the mantis outside. He had done a fantastic job of letting me get close enough to take his picture, and we wanted to make sure to let him go free before the sun went down completely so he could go find some buddies and chill out after such an intense modeling session.

I got this picture quite by accident, as I certainly had no intention of waking up in the morning just to take a photo of a mushroom. Though come to think of it, that might actually be kind of a fun thing to try. Hmm. This image, however, was almost an afterthought and was only possible because of one of my cardinal rules of photography: bring your camera with you. I take my camera to work with me almost every day because I never know when I might come across some type of photographic opportunity, and as often happens I tend to find them more often than not. The day before I took this picture we had one of those rainy, overcast days that is just ideal for taking pictures and I saw a little mushroom poking through the ground cover just outside my office.

It was an interesting picture, or so I thought at the time, because of the way the relatively diffuse lighting cast a nice soft glow over the whole scene. I had to put my D7100 on the ground and use Live View to get this shot (a case in which my D750’s flip-up screen would have been much more useful if only I had that camera with me) and deliberately framed it with the tree in the background in order to give the subject a much greater sense of contrast. I liked this original just fine, and was honestly thinking about putting it up as a Weekly Fifty picture until the next morning.

As I rode my bike up to the office the following day I saw that my little mushroom friend was still there but had opened up a little more, as mushrooms are wont to do, and I figured I would use the opportunity to revisit the picture from the previous day. Just as I was adjusting my camera on the ground and trying to keep everything as similar as possible (same general composition, same aperture of f/4, etc.) a bit of sunlight started to peek out from behind a building on campus and gave the mushroom a fantastic yellow glow around the edges. I took three shots, reviewed them for focus, packed up, and went about my day. Later as I was editing the image I was struck by how much that touch of daylight added to the image, and how it turned what was originally a pretty decent (in my opinion) shot of a mushroom into something kind of special. The morning glow permeated the background and gave everything a nice warm touch that was sadly lacking in the original.

I’ll probably pass by this little bit of fungus on my way home and, if past experience has taught me anything, it will probably be wilting away. That’s how these things go though, and I’m glad I got the chance to capture it in its prime. Sure it’s just a boring simple mushroom, but I thought it made for a cool picture anyway.

Longtime readers of Weekly Fifty might see echoes of an earlier picture in this one, but there’s a bit of a twist: the first one was taken with my regular 50mm lens, while this one was shot with my 10x close-up filter. I hope it’s not too derivative to just take the same type of picture I have taken before, but you know…it doesn’t really matter, I suppose. I have found, since getting these close-up filters, that I quite enjoy taking images of nature accented by droplets of water, and it’s fun to do this sort of thing even if it is treading trodden ground. (Photographically speaking, of course.) When I shot this image I wasn’t even thinking of the picture I took over two years ago, but as I edited this I couldn’t help but reminded of its predecessor and I do wonder if, on some level, my composition here was informed by the image from the summer of 2014. And even if it was, well, that’s kind of the point of doing something repeatedly isn’t it? If you want to get better at a skill you have to practice it over and over, and since I would like to get better at taking pictures of leaves and flowers with water drops on them, I should probably keep doing exactly that :)

Shooting this with a close-up filter did present its own unique set of challenges, and also dramatically altered some key elements of the image when you compare it to the first one. For one, the subject appears dramatically larger simply because I was able to get so much closer to it. The depth of field is markedly shallower as a result, and the image takes on a more intimate feel whereas the first one seems like the droplet is part of a much larger scene. The leaves of this bush that you see here are much smaller than the leaves of the tree in the original image, and while none of these characteristics makes the picture inherently better it is interesting to see how the close-up filter has such a dramatic effect on things. In fact, when I compare the two side-by-side I almost prefer the original because it feels like a more complete composition and also has the benefit of showing a few streaks of rain, whereas in today’s picture the focus is clearly the droplet and almost everything else is secondary. There isn’t much in the way of a rest of the scene, as it were. It’s not good or bad, it’s just different.

I think this speaks to one issue with which I continually struggle when it comes to photography: the desire to always try something new and different. I mentioned several weeks ago in pictures of a squirrel and a duck that I felt like these types of images were almost cheap because they are not all that difficult, given that I work about a block away from the pond on campus where these animals congregate daily. In a similar fashion today’s picture requires nothing special at all other than a bit of rain, and even that could be faked with a spray bottle and some tap water. And so after taking a picture of a rainy leaf, a duck, or a squirrel I often think of it as an item on a checklist that has been completed, never to be revisited. However, this type of thinking is entirely incorrect! If you like taking pictures of something, keep doing it! No one says you can’t, and just because you got a shot of a beautiful sunrise, your kids playing in the sprinkler, a bolt of lightning, or anything else you were aiming for, doesn’t mean you should stop there. Do it again, and again, and again and see what you can learn from the experience. Far from being the stopping point, these pictures should be the starting point of a photographic journey.

And so with that I’ll just close by saying this probably won’t be the last time you see a picture here on Weekly Fifty of a leaf with some water dripping off it :)

I used to be a big proponent of pictures as a medium for storytelling. In several of my earlier Weekly Fifty posts from years ago I would often talk about the story behind each picture, as if there had to be more for the viewer to interpret beyond what they simply saw in the photo. And while that is certainly one way to approach photography, I don’t think it has to always be the case. Sometimes an interesting photo is just an interesting photo, and it doesn’t need any type of backstory or apocryphal information in order to be an engaging visual experience for the viewer.

And yet…

Pictures as stories can be a fun and interesting way to approach this type of art, and even if you don’t do it all the time it is a technique that I recommend trying. All that brings me to this week’s image which is…well, what do you think? I would normally use this space to talk about how I created the image, what it means to me, how I shot it, etc. but this time I think I’m going to leave that alone and ask you to interpret the picture in your own mind. Does it mean anything to you? Does the title influence how you see the photo? (or is it merely a reference to a song I used to have on repeat during study sessions in college?)

See, this picture certainly does have a bit of a story to tell in my mind. I shot it specifically in order to tell a story, and composed it in such a way so as to conjure certain emotions or thoughts in the mind of the viewers, and yet I want to keep that information to myself. I did not manipulate anything you see here, and the objects in the frame were not altered by me in any way. I did choose where to place my camera, what exposure settings to use (50mm, f/8, 1/90 second, ISO 3200*), and where to focus on the subject in order to create the shot I was looking for in order that I could tell the story I intended. However, as I post it here I find myself less interested in sharing what it means to me and curious instead about what it means to the viewers. If you’d like to comment, I would enjoy reading what you have to say and I’m sure others would too. If not, that’s just fine too. And if this image means nothing to you, that interpretation is, in my mind, just as valid as anything else.

So to come back full circle, I still believe in the power of pictures as vehicles for telling stories but I think there’s more to this particular visual medium than that. Photography can be what you want it to be, and if it means something to you then it has served its purpose.

*the value selected by my D7100’s Auto ISO feature

As I’m posting this photo, the classic Monty Python phrase comes to mind: “And now for something completely different.” This is a good example of why I started this Weekly Fifty blog in the first place, which was to motivate me to keep taking pictures and try new things in doing so. The backstory here comes from an early morning when I was awake before anyone else and, thanks to what was honestly just one of those flashes of inspiration you get from time to time, I thought I would take advantage of the very dim light and do some long-exposure photography. I wanted to stay inside in case my kids woke up and started fussing (I like to let my wife stay asleep when those things happen) so I literally just wandered around the kitchen looking for ideas. I found an apple in the fridge, set it on the table, and wondered what I could do to capture a picture of it in some kind of unique way.

After a bit of fiddling I realized I could do some rudimentary light painting with nothing else but my iPhone and the built-in camera flash. A quick swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone screen lets you use the flash as a continuously-on flashlight, which turned out to be ideal for adding splashes of light and color to long exposures. I set my D750 on the table and turned on the kitchen light to lock focus on the apple, then turned out all the lights and set my exposure using manual mode. I knew I wanted to shoot at f/4 and wanted a relatively low ISO, but not one that would result in too long of an exposure. The value I decided on for my exposures was f/4, ISO 200, 10 seconds which gave me just enough time to get the images I was trying to make.

So how did I get this specific result? Let me see if I can break it down…

It began with a nearly pitch-black kitchen, and apple, my camera, and my iPhone. After dialing in my exposure settings I put my camera in self-timer mode to minimize any camera shake and also give me a chance to get my hand over to the apple.

With my iPhone flashlight turned on and my finger over the light, I pressed the shutter button and then held my phone behind the apple. As soon as the shutter opened I slid my finger to the right, which caused the apple to be backlit with a bright white light. After a half second I put my finger back over the light and then moved my hand away in a swirling motion. The red light you see is the light of the camera flash going through my finger, which was not something I planned initially but turned out to be kind of cool.

The blurry smudge just above the apple is my hand, which got briefly exposed when backlit the apple. I tried several variations of this shot but couldn’t find anything to get rid of my hand completely, and since my kids were going to wake up soon I just left well enough alone. I hope it looks like a bit of smoke or something else besides a hand :)

It was fun to play around with this for a little while and I’d encourage you to try something similar, if for no other reason than to experiment with your camera. It’s always interesting to try new photographic techniques, and if you have a camera and a phone you can easily get shots like this…or probably something else way more creative which I would love to see!