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

Here’s something that might look a bit strange or even silly to someone who doesn’t live in the American midwest. What you’re looking at is a tornado siren, and it’s not an uncommon sight around Oklahoma and many other parts of Tornado Alley though the exact shape and appearance of the sirens varies greatly depending on where you are: back home in Nebraska these sirens looked more like outsized bullhorns, but in Oklahoma they often resemble forty-foot-tall honey dippers. Most of the year these sirens stand watch, sentinels of the prairie ready to let loose a piercing wail if a twister threatens to close in on the community. This particular siren is a few blocks from my house and my wife and pass by it several times each week when we go out walking or biking with our kids, and I thought it would make for an interesting photographic exercise: how to capture the slightly surreal nature of this object with a 50mm lens?

When we went out on a recent walk I had no particular intention of taking a picture of this thing, but since I had my camera with me (as I usually do when we go on walks, thanks to my recently-acquired Black Rapid Curve) I decided to go for it. The problem, as often happens with a 50mm lens on a crop sensor camera, is that it’s hard to fit much in the frame without standing way, way far back from your subject. In this case I could have taken a picture of the whole siren pole by standing halfway down the block, but that would have reduced the giant obelisk to just another feature on the horizon since many other trees and houses would be in the shot as well. I also tried shooting up close, but it made for a very confusing image to just see the siren and nothing else.

Thus my dilemma, and one I keep coming back to on this blog: how to imbue a photographic subject with a sense of context. In this case I wanted to demonstrate the sheer size of the siren, so I deliberately framed the object next to a tree. Even if you have never seen a siren like this, seeing it next to a tree should give you a clue as to its height as well as its overall diameter. I also wanted to make room for the sky in this picture because it conveys (I hope) the man-vs-nature dynamic at work here: when storms rage and tornadoes threaten, this siren will warn the neighborhood and give us time to take shelter lest we all get swept away.

As for camera settings, I kept it simple: F/4, ISO 100, and 1/750 second shutter. No shallow depth of field or other photographic tricks were required, and in a way I kind of like that. Sometimes simple is better, and after I shot this I put away my camera, ran to catch up to my wife and kids, and just enjoyed our walk.

Unlike most of the photos I post here on Weekly Fifty, this one actually has a bit more personal significance beyond “Here’s a cool photo I took.” What you’re looking at is a popcorn maker, a jug of popcorn kernels, and the lynchpin that binds the whole operation together: a small jar of coconut oil. For years my wife and I have made homemade popcorn to share while watching Netflix after a busy day, and we have tried all sorts of different methods to tweak it and improve the taste. Not that there’s anything wrong with a bowl full of puffy popcorn by itself, but we have learned a thing or two about getting it just right. One evening recently when we made yet another batch I thought it would also be an interesting picture, and the result is what you see here. But before I get to an analysis of the picture itself, here’s a few things I have learned over the years to help you arrive at that perfect batch of homemade popcorn:

• Use a West Bend Stir Crazy popper

• Use coconut oil instead of traditional vegetable or canola oil

• Use Orville Redenbacher’s original kernels. Never go with Jiffy-Pop or other off-brand kernels

• Use real butter instead of margarine

That’s about it, really. Sometimes I like to dress up popcorn with seasonings and flavored oil, but to be honest the best is really the simplest. On a recent evening after our kids were in bed, dishes were done, clothes were folded, and plans were made for the following few days, we sat down to watch another episode of Prison Break with popcorn and our favorite drinks: Izze sparkling juice. Before I plugged in our trusty popcorn maker I wanted to capture the scene with a picture, so I grabbed my D200 and took a few shots at f/1.8, ISO 400. Since there wasn’t much light and I didn’t want to turn on any more lest it wash out the scene, my camera metered a shutter speed of 1/20 second for a good exposure which is not very good when shooting handheld without image stabilization. To ward off any potential hand-shaking-induced blurriness I took several shots hoping one would turn out, and lo and behold…one did :)

I did move the background elements a bit in order to get a better overall composition, and I purposely left the white balance a bit on the yellow side when I adjusted the RAW file in Lightroom. I wanted to evoke a comfortable homely mood with this, and I hope I succeeded. And as I type this I’m getting kind of hungry for another batch of popcorn. Time to bust out the popper!

This picture is so simple there’s almost not much to say: it’s a jar of peach syrup given to me and my wife by a friend of ours. She and her family spent a Saturday morning not too far from our town picking peaches, and a few days later she had several jars of syrup as a result. Originally she had planned on making peach jam but accidentally used the wrong kind of pectin which meant the sweet concoction would not set up properly. Not one to let things go to waste, she went ahead with the jam-making operation and instead ended up with several jars of syrup instead, and gave a couple to us. Since we’re big fans of homemade pancakes at my house we certainly didn’t mind having syrup instead of jam one bit :)

Something about the way the morning sunlight hit this jar struck a chord with me, and I thought it would make an interesting study in photographic minimalism. I liked the long shadow being cast from the low sun, and part of what I hope to convey in this picture is a sense of warmth and comfort as the sun rises early in the morning. (I’m not sure if that comes through or not, but it’s what I was going for.) Two weeks ago I posted a picture of a girl dancing next to an indoor sculpture and mentioned that such a situation was not very well suited to a 50mm lens on a crop sensor camera, but this shot is almost the polar opposite: a small jar on a table is an ideal subject for the ol’ nifty fifty. What you see here is almost exactly what was captured in camera, with no cropping of any kind. A wider lens would have put too much of the table in the shot and a more telephoto lens would have isolated the jar too much. But that 50mm lens in a situation like this…oh man, it’s smooth as butter. Or jam. Or possibly even syrup :)

I want to end this post with a bit of a challenge to anyone reading this (or listening to the audio feed): take a picture of an ordinary everyday thing, but try to do it in an interesting or compelling way. Post your results in the comment section below and let’s see what we can all come up with :)

There’s nothing subtle about the title of this week’s post: it’s simply an outdoor view of the Philbrook Museum (the location of last week’s Joy in the Water photo) taken at the south end of one of its terraced walkways. As my wife and I were walking the grounds I kept looking for interesting photo opportunities and even though this one is somewhat pedestrian and even a bit boring, I like how it turned in a compositional sense. The subject is squarely in the center, and the lines of trees as well as the stone terraces all serve to draw your eye to the house-turned-museum. And even though the overall symmetry of the image might seem kind of boring, I think it’s kind of pleasing. I thought about going for a different perspective but…

a) I didn’t want to spend all afternoon trying to capture the ideal shot
b) I liked this composition just the way it was
c) It was about 100 degrees outside and we really wanted to get back to the air-conditioned interior

I focused on the windows and shot at f/5.6 to get things nice and sharp, and thanks to a ton of light I was able to use ISO 100 and a fast shutter to avoid any blur from an unexpected breeze. You also can’t see it but right behind me is a fountain and I originally shot a few pictures with that in the center, but it created a weird distracting column of water right where I wanted the viewer to focus on the house. So maybe that counts as trying a different perspective? I dunno. Either way I’m happy with this shot and it might, just might, end up printed and in a frame on our wall someday :)

My wife and I recently visited the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, and I brought my D7100 + 50mm lens to see if I could get any decent shots. This one here illustrates both the utility as well as the limitations of the setup, and while there is plenty I wish I could change about the image I am also quite pleased with it overall. To wit: a 50mm lens on a crop sensor camera is quite impractical when your primary location is a mostly indoor art museum. The focal length is better suited for medium-to-tight portraits, and other types of pictures you might see here on this blog–very few of which are indoors. Even so, I like to make the best out of any situation and I knew there would be some limitations with that setup in a museum but I did it anyway for a challenge.

After an hour of walking through the museum we came across this bronze sculpture by Harriet Whitney Frismuth titled “Joy of the Waters,” and noticed something quite extraordinary: this little girl, caught up in the beauty and dynamic energy of the bronze woman behind her, started imitating the work of art by dancing around on the floor. Through a series of twirls and pirouettes she brought the work of art to life, and while all manner of adults might simply look at it and marvel at its beauty this little girl expressed it in a whole new manner. She didn’t care if anyone was watching, and just spent a minute dancing her cares away, and if the woman in bronze had been able to jump to life at that very moment I am sure she would have joined right in.

As for shooting the actual photo, I had very little time to compose the shot and also didn’t want to interrupt the girl. Thankfully my equipment, though a bit limiting, did allow me to get what you see here. I had three goals here:

1. capture the girl dancing…
2. with the figure in the background…
3. with as little blur as possible.

That meant a fast shutter and, given the subdued lighting conditions, a wide aperture and high ISO in order to make the best use of the light available to me. I had to back way up and through a doorway (hence the stair railing on the left side) in order to get everything in the shot, and the high ISO of 3200 gave me a bit more grain than I would have preferred, but the blur-free movement of the girl was exactly what I was hoping to get. A super wide lens like my buddy Ryan’s Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 would have been awesome, but alas, I don’t have one of those and it’s another item on my ever-growing shopping list of camera stuff to buy…