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

I’m not sure what these ledges are that stick out from below each window of this college dormitory, but something tells me they were once used to hold window air conditioning units. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but the mystery of the ledges is one that I think I would rather not have solved, thank you very much. Sometimes not knowing is even more compelling than the opposite :)

I thought it would make for an interesting photo to capture the shadows cast by each of these ledges in the late afternoon sun, but as I went out to photograph the building I noticed that none of my pictures looked all that compelling. You could see the building, the ledges, and the shadows, but somehow they all seemed bland and empty. Turns out the solution was right in front of me the whole time: use a tree to frame the shot. The idea of framing your subject is something that took me a while to learn, and I still need a great deal of practice at it, but this is an example of how adding another element to a picture can serve to enhance your subject instead of detract from it, as you might think.

And the name? Well, for some reason the ledges reminded me of a massive outdoor staircase, which in turn reminded me of a line Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters that always makes me smile.

I tell you, one of the coolest things to do as a photographer is to help capture moments in the life of a family that they will have with them for years to come. It’s a humbling thought, really, to know that you are responsible for freezing an image in time of someone’s child that they might look back on decades later and treasure for the rest of their time here on earth. But as a photographer, that is exactly what you get the privilege of doing, and it’s a thought that rattles my nerves probably more than it really should. On a crisp autumn morning I met this family at our agreed-upon location and quickly got to work taking photos before the sun rose too high and their baby started to get fussy. Turns out my fears of the latter were a bit unfounded, as the boy was the picture of happiness all morning long, and we had a fantastic time just walking around and taking photos.

Thanks to lessons I learned on previous photo sessions I knew to shoot most of the morning at f/4, ISO 400, with the 50mm lens on my D7100. This was great for individual shots like this, but even better for group photos of the whole family. Using a much wider aperture might get a tad more background blur, but you run the risk of someone being out of focus thanks to shallow depth of field. Honestly, even though you all know how much I like my 50mm Prime lens, most of the session could probably have been shot with a kit lens, so let that be a lesson to you: you can probably squeeze more out of the gear you already have than you might think.

I try to make it a point to have my D200/50mm combination with me at work, because I never know when a photographic opportunity will present itself. (It’s one of the nice things about working on a college campus–there’s always something going on around here.) On this particular morning I drove my car instead of riding my bike, and as I walked past one building on the way to my office I saw this series of lights that looked like it make for an interesting depth of field illustration. With the sun rising low on the eastern horizon the street and surrounding architecture were lit up just barely enough to have kind of a nice warm glow, and these lights served as a nice accent to the coming daylight. I shot this at f/1.8 to get a bit of depth of field, and my idea was to show how the lights got progressively out of focus as they receded into the background. I’m not sure if it worked quite like I hoped, since the other four lights in the photo kind of melded together into one extended yellow blur, but combined with the street lights I think you get the idea. Some of the shots I have posted to Weekly Fifty recently could easily have been taken with a kit lens, but not this one. To get nice blurry backgrounds like this, you really need a big ol’ aperture–unless there is a good deal of distance between your subject and the background, in which case a smaller aperture would work fine.

Each year the fraternities and sororities at Oklahoma State University construct elaborate decorations for our annual homecoming celebration, and on Friday night before the big football game everyone in town heads to campus for an event called Walkaround. It really is a sight to behold, with fifty thousand people milling around, live music playing, vendors selling all sorts of food, games for the kids, and of course the massive decorations–many of which feature animatronic moving parts. The Alumni Association bills the weekend as “America’s Greatest Homecoming Celebration,” and while I can’t verify that claim with authority, I can say that it sure is a cool experience.

This year I went down on Thursday night as the final preparations were being made, with the intention of getting a few pictures as the decorations (or “decks,”) were being assembled. I had hoped to get a shot of someone welding so I could get spark trails, but it was not meant to be–the welding was all finished at this point. Instead I captured this shot and a few others like it, which were intended to show some of the preparations as well as the hustle and bustle of the evening’s activity. I don’t know that this picture does a good job, especially since you can’t really see what the two guys on the lift are actually doing, but I was pleased that I was able to capture the light trails from the passing car as well as a general sense of what it’s like on a nighttime construction job.

On a recent rainy day I took my D200 out to see if I could get any good photos and even though I had nothing in mind per se, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the overcast light as well as the drizzle gently falling to the ground. After walking around for a few minutes I spotted this chain attached to a couple stantions and thought it might make for an interesting photograph. I wanted to get a picture of the water drops hanging off the chain links, but there were other elements to consider too: what angle to shoot, where I should position myself, what else to have in the frame, what exposure settings to use, how little depth of field I wanted, etc. Having taken similar pictures in the past I knew that I wanted to focus the viewer’s attention on just a couple drops, which meant I had to find a way to get a shallow depth of field without going overboard. It’s tempting to open up the aperture on your lens for shots like this because to get ultra-narrow depth of field, but sometimes that can backfire by eliminating the other elements of the picture that give your subject a bit of context.

For this picture I used an aperture of f/4 which might not seem all that wide, but because I was positioned less than two feet from the water drops it gave me just the right effect I was looking for. It gave me the added benefit of using a slightly slower shutter of 1/250 which allowed some of the raindrops to show up as little streaks–a nice added bonus. The only thing I don’t like is the black pole in the background sticking right up through the middle chain link. It’s distracting and if I had paid more attention to the other elements in my picture besides just my subject I could have fixed it by scooting an inch or two to the side. But hey, I learned something and will try to fix it next time, so in that regard I consider the day a success :)