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

Photographing the fountains at Theta Pond is so overdone it’s practically cliché, and yet, just because a million and one pictures have been taken of these fountains at this pond doesn’t make any additional pictures any less valuable. Whether you’re new to the OSU campus or you’ve been here ten years, there’s a good chance at least one picture on your camera roll will have the Theta Pond fountains in it. We all know I’ve had my fair share of such images here on Weekly Fifty over the years, and yet, that doesn’t mean I don’t like photographing them. Especially when I come across a new way of doing so.

That’s kind of what happened here: I was looking for a shot of some magnolia seed pods which are always a favorite subject of mine at this time of year, but I kept coming up empty. Sure I got a few photos here and there but nothing that really stood out to me as all that interesting. Or even good, if I’m being honest. That’s when I noticed, almost as if for the first time, these cypress tree fronds dangling with one of the two main fountains in the background. Let’s be clear: I’ve been around this pond, and probably stood in this exact spot, many times over the years. But I never thought about using the fountains as the background to accentuate a subject in the foreground quite like this.

After a bit of looking around I realized I could essentially frame one particular branch with the fountain serving as a brilliant white background much like you see here. At least that was the idea, but I wasn’t sure how it would look in an actual photograph. Having never taken a shot like this before I didn’t quite know what aperture to use, only that I wanted the background to be obliterated with the leaves as crispy and crunchy as a bowl of dry breakfast cereal. F/2.8 was the logical choice for maximizing background bokeh with subject sharpness, but I also shot a half dozen frames at f/1.8 just in case. Turns out those final images were the real keepers.

When I got back to Lightroom I noticed that while I liked the f/2.8 versions, the f/1.8 shots were on a whole other level. The images, and this one in particular, turned out precisely how I had hoped they would…with one glaring exception: that classic photographer foe known as chromatic aberration. If you look closely (or maybe even not all that closely) you’ll see that many of the wisps of green have a strange purple fringe around their edges, which is what happens when a camera lens tries its level best to bend and warp the incoming light at the largest possible aperture. In low-quality glass like my classic 50mm f/1.8G lens the tradeoff for a cheap price is the presence of this type of optical imperfection especially at maximum apertures, and while Lightroom can do a bit to fix it you’ll never get rid of it entirely on a picture like this without a lot of time spent in Photoshop. And that was time I didn’t really want to spend.

I ended up picking this image as my favorite despite the optical abnormalities because from a purely compositional standpoint this picture was everything I wanted it to be. I decided I could live with the tradeoff, and use it as a challenge to try and find a way to improve my shot the next time.

While this picture might seem, at first glance, somewhat similar to the two images posted in previous weeks I can tell you that any overlap is (mostly) coincidental. Contrary to how the two previous images were shot, this one was a bit more planned-out. If not the specific details, at least the general idea. To be sure I didn’t set out to get this exact image, but I did have some ideas in mind and I’m happy with how everything turned out.

It’s always fun to photograph sunflowers: big, bright yellow petals, lots of contrast with the greens and browns, and they bloom in a nice time of year when the seasons are changing and the weather takes on a certain crispness that you can practically feel in the air just by breathing deeply. It makes the act of photographing sunflowers much more than just snapping the shutter, and lets you step back and think about nature and your place in the world if only for a little bit. And perhaps that’s reading a bit too much into it, but in a post-COVID world it can be the little things like this that add a lot of meaning and perspective to what might otherwise be just another normal day.

This was taken by a ditch behind next to a parking lot behind a strip mall not far from my house–not exactly a nature preserve or wildlife refuge. Still, this hopefully illustrates a point that I have made repeatedly on Weekly Fifty over the years: you don’t need exotic locations to get great photos. Just a good eye and a bit of creativity. My family biked past this spot on a Monday evening and thought it would yield some interesting photographs so I made sure to pass by it the next morning on my way to work. There were dozens of small sunflowers all in fairly close proximity, so I had to scoot around a bit to find a good vantage point from which to capture just a single one. It was a little tricky since many of their heads were turned downwards while also being grouped together, but after a minute or two I saw this one that I was pretty sure would work. I shot a handful of pictures at f/2.4 and f/2.8 and liked this one the best, mostly because of the angle. By stooping low and shooting upwards it gave a sense of character and, if I may be so bold, even a hint of majesty to this relatively ordinary flower. I think I might have also had this shot in mind, at least on a subconsicous level, so maybe today’s image could be seen as an homage to one of my earliest photos from Weekly Fifty.

Not exactly the world’s most creative title, eh. What can I say? I’m a photographer, not a poet.

If this picture looks a bit like last week’s image, just know that any similarities are entirely intentional. In fact, I got this about a minute after last week’s photo and used much of the same thought process too: isolated subject in the foreground, blurry balls of light poking through trees in the background. As George Michael might say, it’s a formula but it works.* The difference here is that I didn’t need to experiment: Having just shot the coneflower photo I knew exactly what I wanted when I came across this kniphofia flower which was, incidentally, about ten yards from the coneflower.

Knowing what kind of shot I was going for, I immediately set to work: I stooped low, engaged Live View, used my left hand to gently brush away a foreground flower, adjusted the parameters of my Auto-ISO with a minimum shutter speed of 1/500 in order to compensate for my shaky hand (you try holding a DSLR in one hand, back-button-focusing, while brushing aside another flower all while crouched down awkwardly) and took a few shots. I was able to find an angle where the flower was, for the most part, ringed by blurry balls of light just like the coneflower. I didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel or do anything dramatically different, just practice my skills with a new subject and see what would happen.

Oddly, I actually got a good shot at a wider aperture of f/1.8 but I ended up using this shot at f/2.8 because the background was just too blurry in the other one. Instead of discrete balls of light there were blown-out circles crowding everything else in the frame, and it didn’t have a certain sparkle or charm that this image has. Also, the depth of field problem reared its head with the f/1.8 shot. While this image isn’t going to win any awards for creativity (It’s a near-identical version of the Indian Paintbrush picture I posted in early September, but obviously with a different subject) it did make me happy to take it and was a fun way to get out and see nature for a bit before heading back to the office.

*old-school SNL Dana Carvey reference there. Not sure if George Michael actually said that or not.

I know it’s been a while since I said this…but I shot this photo on a walk around Theta Pond on the Oklahoma State University campus. Prior to the pandemic I would often go for a quick stroll around the pond while taking a break from work, but in this age of COVID I just haven’t been on campus very much. I’m in the office two days a week and at home the rest of the time, which means the time I do have at OSU is pretty full and doesn’t lend itself to the occasional walk around campus like before. So when I had the opportunity to step out for about five minutes on an early September morning I was armed and ready with my Classic Combo: My D7100 and 50mm f/1.8 lens. I didn’t know if I would find anything worth photographing, but I knew that if I were to have any luck at all it would probably involve the pond.

Soon I came across a small patch of coneflowers which looked bright and colorful–the type of subject certainly worth photographing. So I pointed my camera down and got this shot:

I knew I could do much better than that, so I started following the advice I have given here on Weekly Fifty so many times: I looked at the subject from a different angle. Coneflowers are short, so I wondered what would happen if I got my camera super low to the ground. I held my D7100 pretty low, activated Live View because there was no way I could get my eye to the viewfinder, and just started seeing what various compositions I could come up with on the spot. It took about 30 seconds before I saw that the sunlight poking through a group of magnolia trees in the background provided me with a hugely improved picture opportunity.

With the coneflower in the foreground and the trees in the background I then had to decide what aperture to use. While f/1.8 might seem like a good choice, the tradeoff with that was super shallow depth of field which wasn’t worth it. At least not to me, anyway. I wanted the center of the flower to be tack sharp and a bit of the petals as well, and f/1.8 just didn’t give me enough leeway to do all that. So I stopped down to f/2.4 which was a great compromise (while also experimenting with some smaller apertures just for fun) and gave me the blurry background and subject sharpeness I was aiming for.

One other question remained: How to frame the subject against the background? I wanted the bright balls to form a ring around the flower without intruding on it, and while this wasn’t complicated (all I had to do was shift my camera around a bit) it was an added element to make this picture everything I was aiming for. I have a few other shots where the orange petals overlap the bright spots in the background and it just doesn’t have the same level of polish to it.

So here’s to changing seasons and new perspectives. Hope you all are doing well and staying healthy.

Several years ago my wife and I got our kids one of those battery-powered bubble makers–the kind that sits on the ground with what looks like a turbine made up of bubble wands with a fan behind it to produce bubbles–and while its daily usage ebbs and flows, it keeps coming up when they need a fun outdoor toy. On a warm day in late August that’s exactly what our boys needed: a reason to get out of the house despite the heat and just blow off some steam. As usually happens they soon found other ways to use the bubble machine, putting it on top of a ladder, whacking bubbles with tennis racquets, and shooting these little colored circles high into the sky with my air compressor. I brought my D500 out to document the excitement, and after getting a few shots of the kids and my wife playing around in the later afternoon heat I found myself chasing individual bubbles to see if I could get a good shot of one.

Turns out it was a bit harder than I thought, for two reasons:

1. Those bubbles would not stay in one place.
2. As soon as I got close to one, it popped.

I ended up looking for slightly larger bubbles floating in the midst of the pack and then, with my eyes fixed on a single one, firing as many frames as I could before its beautiful but vapid existence ended with a slight piff. Autofocus was kind of unreliable because my camera had trouble even figuring out what to focus on, and the path of the bubbles was so erratic it was really difficult to even keep one in the viewfinder.

Nevertheless I did get a couple good shots, and this one ended up my favorite. I like how the bubble is isolated against a dark background, framed by bokeh balls with a bit of a starburst on the top right and bottom left. I also think it’s kind of neat that if you look really closely you can actually see me (or, at least, my blue T-shirt) reflected in the very center. The closest I’ve ever come, if I’m not mistaken, to putting a picture of myself here on Weekly Fifty.

I don’t know if there’s a metaphor here…maybe something about chasing your dreams before they disappear? I dunno. To me this just represents a fun afternoon with my family thanks to nice weather and a bubble machine. And some days that’s all you need :)

Sometimes I’ll say things about a particular photo like “This was a fun photo to take” but those statements often apply to the act of making the image, not necessarily the activity or actions taking place during the scene. That was different here, as the activity was 99% of the enjoyment and the photo was almost an afterthought. Almost.

A few years ago my brother-in-law and I built a water rocket based off some plans that NASA has available, and pretty much anyone with some basic tools and access to a hardware store can construct in an afternoon. I made a few modifications to the launcher mechanism over the years (including the four vertical poles you can see in the image, which serve to guide the rocket straight up instead of shooting outward at kids, cars, or windows. I also use my air compressor instead of a bicycle pump, which makes for a pretty entertaining spectacle when you pull the string to release the rocket.

My kids and I always have a blast (har!) when we get this thing out, and so do any neighborhood kids who happen to be in the area too. The rocket easily goes 100 feet in the air, and since all it takes is a little water and compressed air it can be used over and over. One afternoon this summer we were putzing around (to borrow a phrase from my dad) with the rocket and after several launches I asked my kids if they minded me taking a picture of it, even if it would take several attempts to get it right. They were game for trying, so I got out my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens while we got to work on setting up the rocket.

I found a spot to shoot where the background would be dark, and the sunlight was coming from behind the rocket which I knew would make the water shine and sparkle more than if the light were coming from the front. The tricky part was getting a picture of the rocket at just the right time (like what you see here) which is easier said than done. Once you pull that string the rocket launches so fast you can barely see it, and capturing that instant in time is almost a matter of luck more than anything.

Thankfully the D500 was up to the task: I shot at 10fps and 1/8000 shutter speed (f/2.8, natch) because even 1/4000 was too slow and the bottle looked blurry. It took a few attempts to get this shot but we were all super excited when we looked at the result. It’s amazing to see the texture and contours of the water cascading down the sides of the launch pad, and if you click through to see the high-resolution version on Flickr you can see every tiny detail that you miss when just watching with your eyes.

This is the final picture I took during my trip to the Boundary Waters this summer. I shot this looking northeast out on to Clearwater Lake right from the dock, and if you look very closely in the middle along the right side you’ll see a bit of an Easter Egg, so to speak. A Loon, the state bird of Minnesota, casually swimming in the chilly waters as if to bid us a fond farewell on this overcast morning.

On Tuesday night my cousins and I had a campfire roaring for several hours as we talked long into the evening, but eventually the flames died to embers and we started to tidy up a few things for the trip back home the next morning. What a time it had been–three days completely separated from society, well out of range of any road or radio signal. Just the three of us and our canoe, and we knew the trip was coming to a close. They had been to the Boundary Waters several times before but for me everything was a new first experience and I tried to take in as much as I could and enjoy, as well as appreciate, everything from the fishing to the rowing to the sitting around and talking. But when the sun goes down and the lights go out and you know it’s time to close things down, there’s not much else to be done but head for bed and wait for the morning. Soon I was in my hammock listening to the sounds of crickets…and that’s when I felt the first raindrop.

Soon a drizzle became a downpour, and it didn’t let up all night. I slept fitfully, thinking about the sort of things you might expect of a new camper like myself: did I pack everything securely? Did we pull the canoe up on shore? Will everything be wet in the morning? What if the rain doesn’t let up? And on and on it went, with me slipping in and out of sleep all night long until about 6am when I resigned myself to the forces of nature. I got up, started gathering my things and taking down my hammock, and looked for some energy bars that were in the bottom of my soggy pack. The rain was unrelenting, and the three of us slowly packed everything into the canoe and an hour later we were on the water and on our way back home.

But nature was not done with us yet.

We had to paddle the length of Caribou Lake against the wind while the rain fell in sheets all around us. It was over three miles and while I don’t know how long it took, it felt like days. We were in good spirits through it all, because we knew there was nothing to be done and complaining wouldn’t help, but by the end were simply exhausted. Then we had to portage all of our water-logged gear over to Clearwater Lake and do it all over again.

It was not an easy task. But it was one I am glad to have done, and I do not believe I have ever been so relieved to put my feet down on a sandy beach in all my life. Clearwater Outfitters, where we rented the canoes and some other gear, is in a cove that keeps the waters calm so you can’t really tell how windy it was just from looking at this picture, but my goodness it felt like mythical Aeolus himself was against us. And at the end of it all I wanted one last picture to document the events, which is what you see here. It’s a quick snapshot from my iPhone, and it might not look like a whole lot to you, but for me there’s some really intense memories wrapped up in this single frame.

And that’s why I like photography :)

This photo marks a first for me. It’s either a really big deal or nothing at all depending on your perspective, and honestly it probably isn’t anything to raise a fuss over whatsoever. It’s just that this image is different than any other I have posted on Weekly Fifty. Ever. For one simple reason: it’s the first time I’ve shared a picture that I took with my cell phone.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those purists who thinks that real photographers have to use a fancy-pants expensive camera, or that real photography requires expensive dedicated camera gear. Shoot what you like with the gear you have, and don’t worry what anyone else thinks. At least that’s my general approach, and it has worked pretty well for me over the years. The reason I started Weekly Fifty was to hold myself accountable for using my camera gear more and, as a result, grow as a photographer. Because of that I have only ever shared pictures that I have taken with my cameras and not, well, my phone camera.

In this case though, I have to make an exception: there’s no way I was going to bring one of my dedicated cameras on a canoe trip across two portages in the middle of absolutely nowhere just south of the Canadian border. I did bring my Fuji X100F with me on this particular trip, which I used for two sunset photos that I posted a few weeks ago, but that camera, though small, is not exactly pocketable and not at all waterproof. Thus, when my cousins and I set out for a day-long canoe trip from our campsite across some portages in search of a waterfall, the only camera I felt comfortable bringing was my iPhone. (Which just happens to have a bit of water resistance.)

I got this shot as we were paddling across the eastern tip of Pine Lake on a warm day in June with me taking up the middle position in the canoe. It wasn’t exactly the type of scenario where I could position our watercraft just so to get the perfect shot, so I just put my paddle down, grabbed my phone, and made the best of what I had to work with. I took a few pictures mostly paying attention to the horizon line (I didn’t want it too high or too low in the frame) and the clouds overhead, and of the half dozen shots I was able to snap this was my favorite. There’s no editing here, just an image straight from my iPhone camera, though I believe the built-in software plays a bit with the highlights and shadows to get an even exposure even if the end result looks a tad HDR-ish at times.

I’m really pleased with how this turned out: you can see miles into the distance and I think it captures a sense of how remote the BWCA really is. A remoteness I had never before experienced, and hope to once again someday.

I realize that this picture seems like it has very little to do with perambulating, but part of the title is just the simple fact that I’m not very good at coming up with titles. In typical Simon fashion I don’t know what kind of flower this is, but I do know that it’s big. Large. Huge. At least by my reckoning, anyway. My wife and I walk by this flowering plant every morning on our usual route while our kids bike up ahead, and for a while now I’ve thought about taking a picture because it’s just such an interesting flower to look at. Most days I simply forget to bring my camera and on days when I do remember there’s usually some kind of aesthetic issue: bad lighting, harsh shadows, or the flower itself is a bit closed-up and not very photogenic.

On this particular morning I don’t think I struck photographic gold or anything, but it was a rainy, overcast morning and I do think it made for some good lighting and a nice bit of texture with the damp petals making the pinks and reds just a shade or two richer. I brought my D500 and 85 f/1.8 lens so I could get some shots of the kids on their bikes, but turns out that camera/lens combo worked great for this picture too. I shot this at f/2.8 because that lens isn’t all that sharp wide open and depth of field is super difficult to control at f/1.8, and f/2.8 still gave me plenty of background blur while making all important parts of the flower as sharp as a tack. I played around with composition a bit, shooting from different angles until I got a background that I liked: the street receding into the distance, with the flower mostly against dark earthy colors instead of the sky. I kind of wish it were a bit more isolated with that second flower in the background not present, but I didn’t want to go altering the scene or, worse, damaging the plant just to get a shot. Besides, I know the guy who lives here and I don’t think he would like it too much if I went around bending and poking his plants while snapping some photos.

This is another classic example of the type of photo I find myself taking so often: it’s a rather normal subject, in a rather unremarkable situation, that I see on a fairly regular basis, and yet I thought it would make for an interesting photograph. And I think it worked out pretty well. If you scroll back far enough here on the blog you will see a handful of similar photos–that is to say, Indian Paintbrush flowers in the morning light, including one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. These flowers practically litter the countryside here in Oklahoma, but it wasn’t until the night I shot this image that I even found out their name–a bit of trivia that came about during a conversation I had with my neighbor after I put my camera away and got on my bike to ride back home after taking this shot.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. The point is, there isn’t anything inherently unique about this flower or this setting, and yet it made for a pretty cool shot.

So about the image: Each spring my neighbor lets a rather large patch of his two-acre lawn go unmowed which means we get a little sliver of honest-to-goodness wildflowers and other flora just across the street. It doesn’t take long for this spot to fill with flowers of all types including the one you see here, and as we were walking past his house after dinner I thought it would be fun to go back the next day and take a couple of shots. (We’re good friends with these neighbors, and I did clear it with him to make sure he didn’t mind me poking around on his grass with my camera.) The next evening as the kids were getting ready for bed I hopped on my bike, pedaled a few hundred yards, and started snapping some shots. I even found myself literally on the ground in a prone position trying to line up everything just so.

I probably took about 50 shots of flowers, both Indian Paintbrush and otherwise, and this one rose to the top as my personal pick of the litter. I followed the same principle as the dandelion image from earlier this year in that I realized I could make the flower stand out a bit more if I put it against a darker background. While the dandelion had a much greater degree of contrast with the tree behind it, this flower enjoys the advantage of having some really cool rim lighting around the petals which was really fun in its own right. I used the trust old D7100 and 50mm lens and shot this at f/2.4 so as to get the flower tack sharp without getting too carried away with depth of field. I tell you what man, that camera and lens combination isn’t fancy but it sure does get the job done. Not even in a pinch either–just for general photography.

It did feel a little weird crawling, literally, in my neighbor’s field for 15 minutes but I’ve really tried to abandon any sense of self-consciousness I used to have about that sort of thing. I had permission to be there, I wasn’t causing any harm to anyone, and as I was leaving I ended up having a really pleasant conversation with a neighbor across the street whom I did not know but now wave at every time we go past his house. No big moral or grand lesson here, other than to say that it’s fun to take photos, even of familiar subjects in familiar settings, and see what happens as a result :)