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

This picture is another example of not only being in the right place at the right time, but having my camera with me to document the occasion. My coworker and I were walking to get some sandwiches for lunch when we came across this scene of a man carving a figure out of a tree stump, so of course we stopped to get a closer look and take a few snapshots…except I didn’t have my camera. Cue sad trombone. Thankfully he was still carving away when I returned a short while later with my D7100 + 50mm lens, and I spent a few minutes taking pictures from three different angles: what you see here, then on the opposite side, and a few more through the fence. It was clear that bystanders were not supposed to get too close so it was actually kind of a good thing I was shooting with a crop sensor camera since it gave me a little bit more reach with my lens, effectively turning it into a 75mm which helped bring me a bit closer to the action.*

I wasn’t quite sure what exactly I was going for as I shot the pictures but I knew I wanted it to be dynamic. Even though the tree stump was a fixed element and the man himself wasn’t really moving around too much, the chainsaw carving away gave the scene an incredible sense of life and vibrance–something I was hoping to capture with my camera even though I wasn’t quite sure how. I got about 25 images and looking through them it finally clicked: wood chips. That was the secret sauce that added the sense of life and action to the image which I wasn’t even thinking about at the time I took the photos. I mean, I was fairly pleased with how some of the other shots turned out but most of them didn’t explicitly show tree shavings flying around and you couldn’t really see the bar of the chainsaw either, and both elements were clearly present in this picture which I really liked.

I shot this at f/1.8 even though I knew it wouldn’t be the sharpest picture in the world, but given that I was standing several feet away I knew anything smaller than f/1.8 would give me a depth of field that was simply too wide and I was really hoping to get some separation between my subjects and the background. At one point I even tried shooting through the leaves of a small tree to get a bit of foreground in the mix as well, but it ended up just being distracting and kind of gratuitous. Despite the fact that almost none of this was planned out beforehand I am quite happy with how the shot turned out, and it’s cool to have something like this wood carving here on campus. You can’t see it in this picture but the boy and his dog (the thing the carver is working on in the photo) are facing a pond and it really does create a calming pleasant scene when you see it in person.

A few hours later as I was leaving campus to head home I caught up with the carver as he was walking across the lawn and we had a brief but incredibly heartwarming chat. His name is Clayton Coss and for nearly the past three decades he has been giving new life to dead trees by turning them into beautiful works of art. You can watch his story in this video, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

https://youtu.be/X-llstWitKw

The next morning I saw the finished tree carving, and it really was a sight to see. Mr. Coss, if you ever read this…thank you for such a marvelous addition to our campus here at OSU.

*There’s much more to the crop vs. full-frame issue than this, and shooting a 50mm on crop does not magically make it a 75mm lens in terms of composition, background compression, etc. but it does give you a similar field of view as a 75mm lens which is all I meant here.

Good morning everyone! I know this is a bit strange to have an update on Thursday morning with no picture to go along with it, but I wanted to let you know about a podcast episode I recently recorded for the “This Week in Photo” network. It’s all about blogging and I used my experience with Weekly Fifty as the background for much of what I had to say. I thought you might find it interesting so I’m posting the link here:

http://thisweekinphoto.com/twip-family-56-photo-blog/

 

One rain-soaked evening in mid-April my wife and I had just finished watching The Martian and were getting ready for bed with our usual routines of turning off lights, loading stray items in the dishwasher, and finding stray toddler shoes to put back in their proper place when she came running up to me and said “I have a great Weekly Fifty photo for you!” Since it was nearly 10:30pm and we were about to turn in for the night I had no idea what she was talking about and at first thought it must be some kind of joke or prank. I followed her down the hall to our front door where we could see a tiny pair of green feet through the window in our front door, and the little triangle of a frog’s mouth sticking up right between them. Somehow a small frog had found its way to our front door and climbed almost two meters up on the glass so it could be close to our porch light, and there we were just staring at it through the window sort of dumbfounded at the whole situation.

I quickly ran to grab my D750 since there was not much light and I knew I would need to shoot at some high ISO values to get a decent photo of the frog, and we spent a good ten minutes trying different angles from inside the house without much success. It’s not that the frog itself was moving around or in a particularly bad position for a picture, but that all the images we made seemed to be somewhat devoid of context. Sure you could see a frog…but so what? The pictures we got were not all that interesting and certainly did not invite the viewer to look at them for more than a few seconds, if at all. My wife encouraged me to get up on a chair or stepladder and try some varying angles and while they were better than any shots I was coming up with, it still felt kind of lifeless and empty.

Since our little amphibious friend was staying fairly still and more interested in chilling out than moving around, I found a pair of flip-flops, donned a raincoat, and took my camera outside to see if I might have any better luck getting a more compelling photograph. My guiding principles here were subject, context, and composition. I wanted the subject of the image to clearly be the frog, and also have the viewer immediately be able to tell that this was a situation a bit out of the ordinary. Soon I realized that the porch light itself could provide the solution since you don’t normally see this type of scene, and shooting from a low angle implied that the frog was high up on the glass door. I moved around quite a bit trying to frame the picture exactly how I wanted, and shot this at f/1.8 to get a shallow depth of field in order that the viewer would see the frog first and the light (as well as other details) second. I also liked the lower ISOs that shooting at f/1.8 afforded, even though it wasn’t all that necessary on my D750 ;)

Anyway, I hope you like the final shot. I sure do, and to me this serves as a perfect illustration of how it’s important to use your camera every day and build up your knowledge of the fundamentals so when a cool moment like this strikes you are ready for it.

As usual I have no idea what kind of plant this is, and when I tried to find out by submitting the picture to a Google Images search all it came up with was “fruit,” which I am fairly certain this is not. I shot it while (what else?) out on a walk on campus one afternoon with my D7100 + 50mm lens, and in looking back on the picture later on I came to a realization about not just this picture but several of my pictures. It might seem obvious to anyone who reads this blog but I don’t think I ever quite thought about things like this before, and now that I look back at my images with a particular frame of mind I really do think I have come to a conclusion about my photography. Or at least my nature photography. Basically, in looking at this image I think I finally understand what my style is.

If I scan through past images of flowers, greenery, or even man-made objects that I have posted here I think it’s safe to say that this image, of some kind of bulb or seed pod, illustrates a few things that are common in much of my photography. Apparently, as I’m finding out is often the case, I like to place my main subject on the left or right third of the frame. Of this I was well aware, and sure enough I have done it again on today’s photo. (Incidentally, no cropping was involved here. What you see is what I got.) This is kind of an basic rule and one of the first techniques any photographer learns when it comes to composing an image, and yet I think I like it so much because, so often, it just plain works. Others might come along and say the rule of thirds is a crutch, shows a lack of creativity, or is meant to be broken but at the end of the day I find that I really like placing my subjects a little bit off center–usually along one of the thirds.

What this image has helped me realize is a few other elements that show up here also appear in many of my other pictures, and I do think this indicates some sense of an overall style–albeit one that I don’t think I have been implementing intentionally, but is nonetheless present. Along with my subject on the left or right third I also tend to include context clues in the background, often on the opposite third. I like to use a somewhat shallow depth of field, but not so much that the other contextual elements are blurred out so much that you don’t know what they are. I prefer a bit of foreground elements if possible, though there aren’t a whole lot in this picture. I let my subject exist well within the margins of the frame, usually occupying its own small part of the image and not so big that there is nothing else for the viewer to see.

The thing is, it’s good to try new techniques and experiment with different ways of taking photos, but it’s also good to develop your own style over time. Find a type of shot, a type of composition, a certain way of framing your subjects, that you can work on and perfect over the course of your photography life. It’s not a crutch so much as it is your own unique way of seeing the world, and while it is of course good to explore other things it’s nice to have a cushion to fall back on–a home, if you will, that you can return to when you’re not sure what else to try or what other things to do. This photo, I now understand, is an example of what I like and what works for me. It’s simple and quite uninspiring, and won’t win any awards, but it’s comfortable and I enjoy it.

What’s your style?

I remember the first time I was given a Gideon Bible. I was in elementary school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and came across some gentlemen handing out little orange copies of the New Testament, accompanied by Psalms and Proverbs as kind of a biblical bonus. My young fourth-grade mind didn’t quite know what to make of the situation, but I took the Bible in my small little hands, brought it home, and leafed through its pages with wide-eyed curiosity. I believe I already had a bible of my own, but what struck me about my new Gideon Bible was the manner in which it was given. The men who were handing them out at school that day were kind, friendly, and not judgmental in the least. Some kids kept their bibles, some threw them away, and I distinctly remember one being literally torn apart. It was a very literal scattering of seed, some of which fell on some on rocks, some on the path which was then devoured by birds, and some on fertile soil where it might eventually take root and produce good fruit of its own one day. The experience was not lost on my young mind.

Over the years I learned more about the this organization and their mission to spread the word of God to all corners of the world, and I still get a little twinge of joy when I look in a dresser drawer or end table in a hotel and find a small copy of the Bible emblazoned with the succinct yet powerful phrase “Placed by the Gideons.” It’s comforting to know that they are still out there, doing the work of getting scripture into the hands of as many people as possible. That short description is the background for this picture, which I shot on a chilly Wednesday morning in mid-April when the Gideons were on the OSU campus doing what they do: handing out free bibles to anyone who wanted one.

I brought my D7100 + 50mm combination to work on this particular day and actually spent a few minutes mentally debating whether I should go out and take a picture of these men. It seemed like a perfectly benign course of action, and yet I had a hard time bringing myself to do it. I knew all I had to do was ask one of the Gideons if I could take his photo and I was sure he wouldn’t mind, and yet I was lost in a series of mental gymnastics trying to justify my own inaction. “What if they think I’m weird?” “What if they say no?” “What if they get annoyed?” I finally mustered up the gumption to go out and snap a few pictures because, as finally told myself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

As usual my fears and anxieties were entirely unfounded. I struck up a conversation with this man and his colleague who were standing on a corner about 50 yards from my building at work. We chatted for a few minutes about college, campus, bibles, and photography and they said I could most certainly snap a few pictures. I took four shots (two of this man, two of his friend), said Thank You, and went back to my office. This image is my favorite and captures so much of what I like about the Gideons. He is smiling and engaged in a genuine conversation with this young man, and the two of them are each clutching a precious object: one, a bible and the other, a phone. I don’t know if the student took the free bible or not, but hopefully he walked away with a positive impression of the other man and possibly a newfound respect for this type of street ministry.

To the guy in this picture: if you’re reading this post, thank you for doing what you do. It means a lot, to a lot of people.