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

One of my photographic weaknesses is street photography: I just can’t seem to get comfortable taking photos of strangers in public places. Something about it feels strange, as if I’m invading their personal space or doing something illegal. In truth, most street photography is perfectly legal and most people don’t mind having their picture taken at all. It was with this mindset that I approached OSU’s recent International Expo, an annual event wherein student groups from countries all around the world sell food and do various cultural demonstrations. It’s a fantastic event and a great way to not only get some photos, but give your taste buds a sort of instant passport to the world.

Armed with my D200 and 50mm lens (not the best combination for this sort of thing, btw. A wider lens would be much better), I took a few dozen photos during my time at the event but was only happy with this one. I’m just not comfortable getting up close and personal with strangers, and as a result most of my pictures looked boring and uninteresting. I wanted to find a way to capture something happening instead of just static images of food or people standing around. To that end, I kept my camera at F/4 or F/2.8 and tried to get close enough to get good shots without being annoying. And like I said, most of them just didn’t work out. The images I got had no sense of emotion, personality, or even humanity, and many were poorly composed to begin with. This one, though, turned out quite well: I like how the subject is framed, and how he is clearly engaged in some sort of meaningful dialog with the guy in the red shirt. I shot this at f/1.8 which gave me a bit of depth of field even though I was several feet away, and the overhead lighting was at just the right angle to make things interesting. Even though you can’t really tell it’s an international food fair, I think it does a good job of capturing a bit of the energy and activity of the event.

Each year we see these spiders pop up around our house en masse around the start of autumn, but they still surprise me a bit when I first encounter their massive webs. The one in here is about two inches in diameter (including the legs, not just the body) and while I’m not sure if it’s poisonous or not, I’m still more than a little inclined to maintain a respectful distance. I saw this spider when I was taking out the trash one morning, and of my reaction was something along the lines of “whoa.” The web’s proximity to our outdoor flood light made for a really cool backlit effect, and even though I was holding my infant son in one arm I ran to get my D200 and tripod to see if I could get a decent shot. And I did, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. Truth be told I kind of forgot about my new spider friend until that night when I was working in my garage and noticed that he was not only still hanging around, but had his legs fully extended which made for a much more interesting picture. This time I put the 50mm lens on my D7100 so I would have more flexibility if I needed to crop the photo, and could also take advantage of its higher ISO capabilities. Instead of a tripod I just used a stepladder, and tried several angles to get the shot I was looking for. The tricky part here was getting my metering right–I tried Matrix and Spot, but those ended up either too dark or too washed out. Center-weighted got things just how I wanted them, and even though I did have to do a bit of Lightroom finessing (yay for graduated radial filters!) I came very close to nailing the shot I wanted right in camera. Turns out I didn’t even need the higher ISO of my D7100 since I shot this at ISO400, but still, it’s nice to know it’s there if you need it.

Since I work on a college campus I get to see a variety of different technologies put to use in all sorts of classrooms. Interactive whiteboards, iPads, 3D printers, mobile instructional robots (seriously, it’s kind of weird), but sometimes I forget that it’s the tried-and-true methods that can be the most effective. The other day my coworker asked if I would come with her to a classroom to investigate an issue with the interactive whiteboard, and I was struck to see this chalkboard sitting a few feet away from thousands of dollars of computer technology. But more than that, it looked like it had been used recently for actual classroom instruction. It took me back a little bit, to a simpler time when education wasn’t as flashy or interactive but somehow a little more comfortable or, possibly, homely. I don’t know that things were better with chalkboards, slates, or even stone tablets, but a part of me was glad to see that things like this still remain at least somewhat useful and relevant in our modern hyper-connected classrooms.

I was also thankful that I had brought my D7100 with me, as I had to shoot this at ISO 1600 which would have been the upper limit of my D200 but is relatively clean and noise-free here. I shot at 1/90 to get a clear image, and stopped down to f/3.3 so as to get a relatively wide depth of field. I was super pleased with the lighting in the room, which created sort of a natural vignetting though I did do a bit of burning in Lightroom to amplify it a bit.

I don’t normally hang out on the third floor of parking garages, but that’s exactly where I found myself the other day when I took this shot. I was not looking for anything in particular, and to be honest I didn’t really see much of anything worth photographing for a while (probably because I just wasn’t looking hard enough) but when I decided to point my camera downward a whole new perspective opened up to me that I had not previously considered. I found this particular intersection of sidewalks and waited for someone to walk by, because I didn’t think the concrete itself was particularly interesting. Seeing someone walking adds a sense of motion and context that would otherwise be missing, and even though the big round street lamp adds kind of an unnecessary element to the shot I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out overall. I think it would be cool to come back in the morning or evening and get a picture with the glow of the lamp, so who knows, you might see something like that showing up here on this blog one day :)

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.