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

While I enjoy photography as a hobby, I also have fun taking photos for friends and family and hope to do it more as I get experience and build up a portfolio. Recently some friends asked if I could take photos of their newborn baby, so we went down to the OSU campus and spent an evening in the waning daylight taking all sorts of pictures at a few different locations. Most of the evening my 50mm lens was on my D200, and 35mm lens on my D7100, which allowed me to switch back and forth between the two lenses in an instant (though I did actually switch lenses from one camera to the other at one point because, when push comes to shove, the D200 can’t quite match the image quality of the D7100). A couple of times during the evening I fired off a few quick shots of the couple’s other daughter who recently turned 3, and if I remember correctly this picture here was the last one I took during the entire session. It was a moment of pure serendipity, and as the sun was almost at its lowest point on the horizon I called out to her and made some sort of funny joke or comment which elicited one of the purest children’s smiles I can recall seeing. It struck me that after an hour of positioning, posing, and adjusting everything possible, this spontaneous picture ended up being one of my favorites from the whole ordeal. Don’t get me wrong–I got plenty of good shots, and many with the 35mm lens so I can’t really post them here, but something about the sunlight reflecting in this girl’s eyes, combined with her million-dollar smile and the the glow of lamplight behind her, made this the kind of shot that reminds me why I like photography so much in the first place.

A couple other notes from the evening, for anyone interested in doing this sort of thing:

• I used this reflector for most of the shots (but not this one), and had one of the parents operating it while I snapped photos. For $20, it’s one of the most mind-blowingly useful tools you can have as a photographer. My wife bought it for me after seeing it on Young House Love, and if you’re looking to up your picture-taking game I highly recommend it.

• A $20 basket from Hobby Lobby, plus a few blankets, is all you need for some really cool newborn shots.

• Don’t be afraid to toss your gear around. Your camera will be just fine if you set it on the grass for a little while :)

• Kids don’t sit still, so get used to the idea of taking a lot of shots. Like, a ton. I went home with close to a thousand which I pared down to about a hundred and then pared down even further.

• Finally, whenever kids are involved, you really really really have to get in the mindset of taking photos at their level. Most of the evening I was on my knees or stomach in a prone position.

If you follow this blog with any regularity, you might have noticed that I rarely, if ever, post photos of food. I guess it’s just not my thing, because I don’t know how to make food tell a story or convey an emotion. Certainly it can be done, but it’s not exactly what you would call my forte. But when I was eating lunch with my son the other day we saw this tiny little grape amid a cluster of its normal-sized counterparts, so I thought I might as well bust out the ol’ D200 and 50mm lens and see what I could do. I tried to pay attention to lighting and background, which meant I had to scoot the plate over a few feet to get the light from the window, and angle my shot in such a way as to isolate the small grape from the rest but also put it in front of a section of background that would make it stand out. I also had to use a few of the focusing tricks I learned on my July 23 photo because the 50mm 1.8G is no substitute for a true Macro lens. I’m pleased with the results, but even though I had fun attempting this shoot but I don’t think I’ll be tossing up shots of my lunch on Instagram anytime soon.

This image is a bit of a departure for me, because there is nothing organic or earthy in frame at all. It’s a steel structure with a pole and valve sticking up, and I’ve given it the title “Control” because it’s most likely some sort of control valve to adjust the flow of liquid or steam. (Believe me, there’s no hidden meaning with the title. I promise. I’m just not very good at thinking up titles.) I saw this a few weeks ago when I delivered some mail to the campus post office, and as I exited the building I noticed a series of these control valves sticking up on the roof of the boiler station which takes care of delivering hot water to the University. Or at least that’s what I think it does. To be honest I’m not really sure, but whatever it is, it looks cool so I returned after several days and snapped this picture in the early morning. The entire palette here is blue, which contrasts severely from the usual colors I like to put in my photos, though as of late there has been a more monochromatic bent towards the images on here so maybe this is my way of subconsciously exploring a new photographic frontier. I dunno. I don’t know if it’s successful or not, but I tried to use leading lines to draw the viewer’s eye to the main subject of the photo: the circular wheel, which itself is a stark contrast to the rest of the image which consists entirely of straight lines and right angles. I’m not entirely happy with how the wheel is framed though, since the lower portion is bisected by the diagonal support arm, but there were not many angles from which I could realistically take the picture given the constraints of my 50mm lens, so we’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got here.

When I get to work the sun is usually just peeking out over the horizon, which means that pedestrians and passers-by tend to cast long shadows in the early morning light. This phenomenon is somewhat short-lived, since the sun rises fairly quickly, but the other day I took just a few minutes and sat down outside my building waiting for people to walk by in hopes of catching an interesting silhouette. But more than that, I wanted something that would capture a sense of motion and life. It is a college campus after all, and there is usually something happening around here no matter the time of day. Sure enough, a few people and bike-riders did travel past and I snapped a few photos of each one not really knowing what would happen. Since I don’t normally do this sort of thing I wasn’t sure what aperture to use so I tried f/4 just for kicks and figured I would adjust things accordingly for next time based on the results of this experiment. When I got back to my computer I realized that most of the photos were just not very interesting, and even though the subjects were moving when I shot the pictures, that sense of kinetic energy did not really come across in the photos except for this one. It’s clear that this girl is going places, and her cowboy boots lend a distinctly western feel to the photo as well. The bit of rim lighting on the front of her legs was a nice bonus too, and this makes me want to do more of these types of silhouette shots.

This is a classic example of how photo opportunities can be found in everyday life, if we take a little time to open our eyes just a bit wider to the world around us. The other day when my coworker and I left our building to run a short errand I noticed a small patch of mushrooms by the stairs, and at first didn’t think much of it. But as we walked past, I noticed how there was one tall mushroom and two shorter ones–almost like a father, his wife, and their offspring. Of course this personification is somewhat silly and childish, but it’s often through the eyes of a child that we see the world as it really is. Or perhaps, what it really can be.

I returned a short while later with my camera and lay flat on the ground, trying to get the framing just right. The overcast sky made for spectacular lighting, and I wanted to get the background just right so that this fungal family seemed almost ethereal and even a tad dreamlike. I shot this at f/2.8 since f/1.8 resulted in such a shallow depth of field that the middle mushroom was out of focus, and used ISO 200 to get things all nice and silky smooth. One thing that caught my eye in Lightroom was a bit of chromatic aberration along the top side of the mushrooms, which I am guessing was due to the extraordinary contrast between the white subject, dark background, wide aperture, and relatively inexpensive glass (higher-quality lenses handle this better at wider apertures, but a $200 Prime lens is a far cry from a high-quality L-series lens). Thankfully, software can fix these issues fairly easily and I am quite pleased with the result.