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

Right off the bat I want to make it clear that this was not the photo I had intended to take when I went out in the snow with my camera. Not even close, to be honest. I was really hoping to get an image with snowflakes swirling around, not unlike a few photos I have taken in past months wherein you can see raindrops falling (appearing as streaks across the frame) in front of or behind the subject. We don’t get a lot of snow in Oklahoma, and on this particular day I happened to have my camera with me right as a bout of wintry mix started falling so I ran outside to capture what I could. I even brought my cheesy little travel tripod (aka World’s Worst Tripod) with so I could get a half- or one-second exposure in order to capture the snowy streaks left by the flakes as they meandered towards the ground.

That was my idea, anyway. Let’s just say it didn’t exactly work out.

The fatal flaw in my plan, as you have probably guessed, is that snow is very very reflective. Even on an overcast day, the snow on the ground reflects so much ambient light that it’s like shooting at noon on a summer day. The only way to get a decently long exposure was to stop my lens down all the way to f/16, set my ISO to 100, and even then I was only getting about a 1/8 second shutter–way too short to capture falling snowflakes, though it would have been plenty for getting some raindrop streaks. To get a decent image I really should have had a Neutral Density filter, but alas, the only ones I have are for my 35mm lens (note to self: buy an ND filter!)

I tried a few shots but quickly realized that my lack of a Neutral Density filter along with my terrible tripod meant that I was never going to get the shot I was hoping for. So I did what anyone on the OSU campus would do when looking for a picture: go to Theta Pond and find some ducks! It’s a bit cliche but I didn’t want to leave empty-handed, hence this duck photo. It’s nothing special, but sometimes you just gotta do the best you can with what you have. The lessons I learned were more valuable to me than the photo itself, but I’m posting it anyway because it serves as a reminder to me that sometimes you really do need to have the right gear to get the shot you want :)

Incidentally, if you listen to the audio commentary you’ll hear a bit at the end when I mention the eye of the duck which you can’t really see on the original file. If you’re curious, here is the original file for comparison.

Taking this photo was another exercise in pushing aside my misgivings about taking photos in public where (gasp!) someone I don’t know might see me. I had just come out of a meeting across campus and was walking back to my office when I came across this scene that I thought would make an interesting picture. But taking shots like this from eye level is, as Mr. Crocodile would say, so uninspiring. The solution? Get on the ground and take some shots! No big deal, right? I must say, this sort of thing is getting a bit easier for me, but I’m not quite there just yet.

A few people did walk past as I was lying prone while fiddling with control dials on my D200, but I don’t think they cared at all. And in the meantime, I got a shot that I kind of like. I toyed with a few shots at f/8 but rather liked this one at f/4.8 because it had a little bit of depth of field going on. The leaves in the foreground add a nice touch, but a big part of me wishes there was some sort of grand vista in the background instead of another brick building. I was hoping to get a shot that conveyed some kind of visual perspective, and to a degree it worked…but that building back there. Oof. It’s also got a strange blue-ish color cast that I could do without, but that’s kind of nit-picking.

One thing I do want to note about this photo is the position of the light, and it was something to which I carefully paid attention as I set up the shot. The sunlight is actually coming from above and to the right, and I made sure to put my camera in the shadow of a pillar on the right-hand side that you can’t actually see. This allowed me to get a properly-exposed photo even though the pillars were being lit from the back side that you can’t actually see here. It was a fun little exercise in paying attention to lighting, and a reminder for me to always pay attention to things like that if I want to really capture my vision for a given photo.

This came about when I had to run an errand at work, and brought my camera with me in case a photo-op presented itself. I was walking past a pond on campus that I have been by dozens, if not hundreds of times, and figured (incorrectly) that there was nothing interesting worth photographing. Then I remembered a suggestion my coworker Gina told me a long time ago, which was to simply look up. So I did, and lo and behold, I saw this tiny patch of green hanging down from the branch of a dormant cypress tree. I took this photo in early February, a time that I would not normally expect to see things turning from brown to green. And yet, there it was: a patch of life either hanging on through the winter or popping up before anything else. I thought it might be too far away to get a good shot, but it worked out OK and I didn’t even crop it very much.

To get the shot itself I pointed my camera up and used manual focus, as I didn’t trust the autofocus to be able to track the subject or even lock on adequately at all. Perhaps a better camera like my D7100 would have been able to do this, and my trusty D200 showed some of its limitations in this situation for sure. The wind was blowing just a bit, so I took several shots as I brought the object in and out of focus, and even though my depth of field was just a tad too shallow (the tip of the greenery is just barely out of focus) I think it turned out decently enough. I made the classic mistake of shooting at f/1.8, which really is too wide for a lot of the things I like to shoot, and stopping down a bit would certainly have helped. At this point I’m not sure if I will ever learn to restrain myself, but I’m going to keep on trying :)

I often write about how the photos on here are taken in moments of unplanned serendipity, and to a certain degree this one was too. But part of this was, while not exactly planned, certainly intentional. First, a bit of background: Several times a year my wife and I take our kids to the OSU Equestrian shows as a fun way to get out and see some talented young performers compete against rival teams from around the country in a sport that doesn’t get nearly the same amount of attention of football, basketball, or anything that ends with the suffix -ball. When we went out a few weeks ago I brought my D7100 + 50mm to take some snapshots, but also to try and get a photo like this. I had a vision in mind for the type of picture I wanted to get: cowboy boots on a fence with some horses in the background. I didn’t exactly plan on taking a shot of my kid and our friend’s daughter, but when I saw the two of them on this fence looking out at the competitors I could hardly resist the urge to start clicking away on my camera.

I only took a half dozen shots, mostly because kids are fast and rarely stay in one place for long. And, as I found out, neither do horses. I was really hoping to get a picture with some activity in the background to give a bit of context to the onlookers, and as luck would have it one of the riders was maneuvering her horse in just the right spot for me to take this photo. A half second later the horse was behind the fence post, and then out of the frame entirely–as were the kids, since they soon became more interested in jumping off the fence and seeing who could get the most distance.

On my last post I emphasized the importance of understanding fundamentals of photography such as composition and framing, and practicing them whenever possible. This shot, to me anyway, represents why these basic elements are so important. I was able to unconsciously construct the photo I was hoping to get, simply because I went into the situation knowing things like what aperture, ISO, and shutter speed to use (f/2.8 to get some depth of field, ISO 100 because there was a ton of daylight, and a super fast shutter to freeze the motion). But more than that I knew that I had to kneel down, move around, and wait for the right moment to get the shot I was looking for. I don’t say this to heap praise upon myself (far from it, to be honest) but as an illustration of why the fundamentals are so important: so that you know how to do what you need to when the moment strikes.

Finally, I suppose it’s fitting that this photo marks two years of me doing Weekly Fifty. If I go back and look at some of my earlier pictures, it’s clear that I often had no clue what I was doing and certainly very little sense of composition, framing, emotion, storytelling, or even the basics of exposure. I did this blog as a way to explore the Lord’s creation through my camera lens, but also to force myself to learn the craft of photography. This picture, in a small way, serves as a landmark to show me how much I really have learned but also just how much more there is to know.

Here’s to a fantastic journey, and many more years to come…

This shot was directly inspired by my brother Tom, who recently got a D200 + 35mm f/1.8 lens and has been using it in all sorts of interesting and creative ways. The other day he send me a picture he took of his Kawasaki motorcycle wherein he focused on the logo and let the body of the bike sort of fade into the background. It was a beautiful shot, and I thought to myself, “I should try something like that.” So I went out and tried to find a motorcycle to photograph, but came back empty-handed, as there were none to be found in the particular parking lot I was visiting. So I wandered around a bit more looking for something I could use for a similar type of shot and came across this Wolkswagen Beetle.

To be clear: There is a lot wrong with this photo. The smooth red finish of the car is marred by all manner of scratches and imperfections, none of which show up unless you get really close and shoot kind of into the sun from a really low angle. You’d never see these scratches just by looking casually, but they sure did show up here. Major bummer.

Also, the sticker is horribly tacky (imho) but hey, it’s not my car so who am I to complain?

Finally…I really had no idea what I was doing here. I shot at f/8, ISO 400 in order to get a bit of that star pattern I’m so fond of, and did move myself around a bit in order to get the starburst positioned on the lower-left of the logo, but other than that I was shooting in the dark. Well, in broad daylight, but you get the idea.

I suppose a good deal of Photoshop work would have cleaned up a ton of the imperfections with this picture, but as it stands I’m just leaving it and chalking the experience up to another learning opportunity. Because really, that’s what this whole blog is all supposed to be about in the first place :)