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

Earlier this year a friend from work visited Scotland with her family, and brought back a handful of miniature Loch Ness Monsters made of glass that she purchased from a local vendor after spending time near the well-known lake just south of Inverness. About an inch and a half long, each of the miniatures contained a striking amount of detail, from subtle swirls of color to a tiny indentation for the eye. As I held the one she gave me in my hand, I immediately had an idea of how to capture an image of it with my camera. Way back in 2015 I took this picture of a little wooden toy train that that my son got for a birthday present. I used my Nikon D200, a 50mm lens, a tripod, and some crumpled-up aluminum foil. That’s it. It wasn’t fancy but the results were pretty cool, and over the years I have revisited that general compositional idea here and there to take similar pictures of other small objects.

I wanted to do the same thing with this tiny little Loch Ness Monster, so later that day I used a scene not too dissimilar from the one that I used to create the original image of the loon. First, I crumpled some aluminum foil and set it on the table and carefully set the little Nessie among some wrinkles. I then put my D750 on a tripod with 105mm f/2.8 macro lens replacing the old Nifty Fifty, pointed it at the figure, and focused. Finally I got out several of my Pavotubes and placed them around the set, including one that I held in my hand to get just the right reflection on Nessie’s head while the exposure was being created. If you look below you can just barely see the glass figure in front of my lens, and everything else is more or less exactly as it was when I took this week’s photo.

I took a few photos and was mostly pleased with the result, but something didn’t look quite right. It was a fine picture of the glass monster, but it didn’t have the right feeling, or emotion, that I was hoping to capture. Something was missing. Then it hit me: the loch ness monster lives in a lake, right? The essential element I had neglected to add was just that: water!

I poured a bit of water onto the foil, and that gave the scene exactly what it needed. My son, upon seeing the final shot, said “Dad, it looks like it’s actually swimming through the water.” I was really hoping to capture that feeling, and when I heard his reaction it felt pretty good–as if I had done what I set out to do. This was an extraordinarily fun picture to take, and who knows…one day maybe I’ll be able to visit Loch Ness with my family for real and maybe even take a picture of the actual monster swimming at sunset.

Or maybe not ;)

If there’s one theme that has been present throughout many of my images this year, it’s that of building on previous works to create something new based on what I have learned. Over the years, and particularly 2024, I have found myself revisiting familiar concepts, compositions, and themes from earlier in my photography journey and this image of a fiery skipper butterfly resting on top of a flower to take a drink of nectar represents yet another illustration of my own growth and change.

Over a decade ago I took a picture of the same animal resting on a similar flower, in almost the exact same location as this week’s image. I shot it on my Nikon D200 with a 50mm lens–the same gear that I used to launch Weekly Fifty a few months prior. It was one of those initial images that helped me see the possibilities afforded by learning to control my camera so I could get the kind of photograph I would have never before thought possible. Basically the photography version of Tom Hanks making fire. As the years went by I built on that original with lots of other similar shots, not in pursuit of picture perfection but always striving to simply learn, grow, and improve. Sometimes it meant newer, better gear such as moving from APS-C to Full-Frame or upgrading to a high-quality macro lens instead of relying on somewhat crude (but nonetheless quite effective) close-up filters, but mostly my improvements have been due to studying the nature of photography–lighting, exposure, colors, highlights, shadows, angles, and so on.

That brings me to this week’s featured photo–not the culmination of everything that has come before, but an example of what it means to build on what has worked and learn from experience. It’s a simple image, easy to understand with a clear subject and blurry background, but that simplicity is the result of years of practice, refinement, and also a bit of good luck. The first thing to note is that the photo is basically monochromatic, consisting almost entirely of purple and yellow. (Magenta and goldenrod? Amethyst and saffron? To me, it’s just purple and yellow.) This is somewhat unique compared to similar shots I have taken, most of which have at least some greens in them for good measure. In fact, the image below was taken in the same spot about one minute earlier. It’s remarkably similar in many ways, but the tri-color scheme changes so much about the composition and how it’s seen and interpreted by the viewer.

Limiting the pallet of this week’s photo to two instead of three was a completely intentional compositional choice I made, and one that wouldn’t have even occurred to me in years past. There’s also the issue of perspective–that is, the position of the camera relative to the fiery skipper butterfly. In the image above, which is similar to many I have taken over the years, you see a profile shot of the subject. It’s fine, but it’s also not all that interesting. In the featured image for today the butterfly is angled and looking right at the camera almost as if to say hello there, and inviting you, the viewer, to join it for a short snack.

I hope to continue taking photos like this, and maybe get some shots of monarchs and other butterflies, not just now but in years to come, and not just learning but also having a lot of fun at the same time :)

If you look at this week’s image and do a bit of a double-take, thinking that you have already seen this picture before, you would not be too far off. In a lot of ways this picture is kind of a carbon-copy of the same shot I put up last week which was, in and of itself, an echo of the image from the previous week. It’s all part of the process though, and at the end of the day what matters to me is that I’m learning, growing, and enjoying the process. There’s also an element of self-reflection involved, and in looking at this picture I can see some things that are inspired by previous shots but others that I could have done differently to make a more compelling composition. That’s not meant as a criticism, but simply an example of self-awareness and a desire to improve.

Take, for example, the background. Specifically, the background just behind the flower on the right. It’s blurry, contrasts with the color of the subject, and serves to enhance the image overall. However, there’s also the matter of the green vertical flower stem cutting through the frame just above the bright orange and yellow flower. It’s not great, and the kind of thing I would normally make sure to look for upon taking the image and, upon seeing it, take steps to rectify such as repositioning myself or looking for another spot in the garden from which to compose a similar shot. But like the dwarves of middle earth, delving too greedily and too deep, I didn’t think beyond the immediate gratification of taking a cool photo. As such the final image is fine, but not great, and I’m perfectly OK with that since I still feel like I learned something.

The same goes for the purple flowers poking up right at the base of the same green stem, almost like a pop-up ad on the internet trying to get your attention. I could have cropped the image a bit, or even used the healing tool in Lightroom to just remove it, but instead I just left it as-is to serve as a reminder for me to take my time and compose my shots a little more carefully next time.

If all this sounds like I’m being a bit harsh on myself that’s really not my intention. It’s an effort to examine what worked well (most of the shot) and learn from what didn’t (green stem; purple flower) and try to do just a bit better next time. I’m sure I will, and I’m excited to see the results :)

In a way, this image is three distinct things: Something old, something new, and something borrowed. (All it’s missing from the classic wedding adage is something blue, but maybe that’s for another time.) It was a bit of an experiment for me and an inadvertent treading on new ground, while also calling back to the type of image I have been creating for years and quite enjoy revisiting on a pretty regular basis. Let’s go through each one, shall we?

Something old: The basic composition here is one that I have been doing for years, even including last week’s shot. This elements here are all simple, basic, and in my opinion, highly effective. You just can’t go wrong with a single clearly-distinguishable subject in the foreground and slightly to the side, along with a blurry background to add additional context. You can take this kind of shot with almost any camera, even a cell phone if you have enough physical distance between the subject and the background. (Or if you’re into AI-based image trickery and manipulation like the latest phones can do, but I can promise you all you’re seeing in the image above is simple light and physics. No AI-anything.) The trick is to figure out how to position yourself with respect to the subject, not to mention basics like lighting, aperture, and other elements of exposure. But despite the simplicity, this is the kind of picture I always enjoy revisiting over time–especially after a summer of more experimental photography.

Something new: I usually try to get even exposures in my images, with a good balance of light and shadows. You know, the kind with a histogram that’s just a simple hill without any extremes along the spectrum. This image is, in that respect, radically different from what I normally shoot. The subject is properly exposed, but the background is significantly brighter. Not overexposed–well, not exactly, though some could argue otherwise–but just way brighter than the subject. It’s a concept called high key photography and one that I generally shy away from, probably because it’s a little trickier to pull off well. But in this case I think it works great, and I’m really happy with what I was able to get.

Something borrowed: A few months ago I took this shot in my neighbor’s yard after a decent rain, and the compositional elements have kind of stuck with me ever since. Notably, the idea that there is one clear subject in the foreground positioned at an angle, and a complementary subject in the background facing the opposite angle. So when I found myself in the formal gardens at OSU looking at this Melinis minutiflora plant, I thought I would use the opportunity to build on the shot I took earlier in the year. I moved myself around until I found a good vantage point where I could create kind of an echo of the earlier picture, and I must say, I really like the result.

So there you have it, a fun photo to take where I built on some existing skills and tried something new too. Kind of the essence of why I enjoy photography so much :)

I’ve been doing a lot of off-the-beaten-path photography over the past several months. Star trails in the Rocky Mountains, sunsets and moonrises at the Florida coast, close-up shots of fidget spinners with glass-ball reflections…it’s been fun, but it’s also been a bit exhausting. Not in terms of effort and excitement, but I can just feel the sense that the creative muscles in my mind have been stretched a bit beyond what I’m used to. If I didn’t enjoy taking photos, I just wouldn’t do it. But I feel like the most recent spate of images I have posted have been well beyond the norm compared to what I usually create with my camera, and sometimes it helps to just re-center things a bit and get back to basics. This picture, then, might be seen as somewhat of a reset. A course correction, if you will, and a chance to stop, take a breath, and return to the familiar: my D750, a prime lens, and a walk around Theta Pond at OSU.

If I had a particular style, or a type of image that could serve as a representation of the images I am fond of creating, this shot would serve as a prime example. It’s a clearly-distinguishable subject just off-center, augmented by bright, distinct colors and a blurry background. Shots like this aren’t complicated and won’t win any awards, but I enjoy them and feel like I either learn something new in situations like this or, at the very least, get to practice and refine my skills. The seed pod you see here, that of a Golden Rain Tree, is about one inch tall so I had to get kind of close in order to have it fill half of the vertical portion of the frame. That’s not difficult at all with a macro lens, but what is a little tricky is choosing the right exposure settings–especially the aperture. I wanted to completely blow out the background while still getting the veins of the seed pod walls as clear and sharp as possible, so I settled on f/6.7 as a compromise and I think it does the job nicely. I specifically positioned myself so that the seed pod was not only on the right side of the frame, but slightly slanted while also getting some sunlight on the left side. It’s simple, almost classical, composition and it gets the job done quite nicely if I do say so myself.

It has been fun to try so many new things over the summer, photographically speaking that is, but taking a picture like this feels like slipping on a pair of old jeans in the morning after spending the previous day all dressed up to attend a wedding. This photo is enjoyable, comfortable, and reminds me what I like so much about photography in the first place.