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

We’ve all heard the saying Stop and smell the roses, and on the day I took this photo that is exactly what I did. I was out for a short walk with my D200 and saw a collection of flowers in a giant pot, so I stooped down low just to examine them. There was nothing special or noteworthy about these flowers, but I have found that sometimes it’s nice to take a break and look at the world a bit closer and see what you can find. I soon noticed that there was at least a dozen small insects crawling around on the green stems and orange petals, almost like an entire micro-ecosystem was unfolding before my very eyes. The spider in this photo was too close for autofocus so I had to switch to manual, and I also tried to position it such that the background elements served to complement my unwitting subject rather than draw the viewer’s attention away. Perhaps f/1.8 was a bit too wide for this picture, as the depth of field is almost distracting, but I think overall it works OK.

Like other photos on this blog, I have seen this object many times but never really stopped to consider the photographic opportunities it afforded. It’s an ordinary picnic table in the middle of a park located next to a junior high, and while it seems rather pedestrian and mundane at first, there are actually many layers of history and meaning hidden beneath the paint and scratches of the table. I don’t know if this picture is even all that interesting, but in terms of telling a story, there are many chapters etched on these wooden boards. While most have been long since lost to the ravages of time, it’s interesting to ponder everything that has transpired over the years around the benches of this humble picnic table.

Another example of how a bit of sunlight (but not too much) can work wonders for a photograph. This was just before sundown, at roughly 7pm (check the EXIF data on Flickr if you want to know for sure), when I was playing with my son at the park. Normally a tricycle might not seem like a good subject for a photo, but in this case I wanted to see what I could do given the available light and the relative calm of the park. But in this case I think it turned out OK, and I even tried a few different poses, so to speak of the tricycle itself. I was kind of going for that automobile-advertisement concept. Not sure if this would make it in a spread in Tricycles Monthly, but maybe I should give it a shot :)

I took this at the Bocce Ball tournament during the annual Oklahoma Special Olympics, held on the OSU campus at Boone Pickens Stadium. My coworker’s daughter was helping out with this particular event so we walked over to see her and the team she was with, and while we were there I tried to capture a bit of the scene with my camera. In doing so I realized again just how far I have to go when it comes to taking pictures of people, especially in a crowded public setting. I just did not feel comfortable getting close enough to these athletes to take their photos (I’m just a dude with a camera, after all, and not a credentialed sports photographer or anything like that) so I tried this approach instead. I’m happy with the picture itself, but I’m not sure if it works to adequately capture the energy and excitement of the day. No, scratch that. I know it does not work. Hmm. I’m going to need to practice sports photography more…

I don’t often use manual focus when shooting, and I suppose it’s a skill that I would like to try more as time goes on, but it’s so darn easy to use autofocus that I wonder if I will ever actually make myself go full manual. Still, it’s times like this when focusing by hand can really come in handy. I was playing with my kids outside when I saw a few tiny spider webs in the low-hanging branches of our backyard Chinese Pistache tree, and thought it would make for an interesting photo especially with the impending sunset. Trouble was, I couldn’t get my lens to focus on the web closest to me so I had to do my best to compose the shot manually, and while it mostly worked out you can see that the foreground of the web isn’t quite as crisp as I would like it. Even at f/4 the depth of field is simply too shallow, or else I needed to be a bit more careful when shooting. I don’t think it’s a bad photo, but I do think I missed out on what could have been a much better picture had I taken a few more shots or at least taken the time to check things in camera. But then every minute I spent fiddling with my D200 was a minute not playing with my kids, and if that means I don’t get the exact picture I’m looking for, it’s a tradeoff I sure can live with :)