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

For the past few years one of our kids’ favorite video games has been Mario Kart. They started on the SNES original and then graduated to Mario Kart Wii, then Mario Kart 8 (not Deluxe; we only have a Wii-U, not a Switch) and also dabbled in Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart 7, and even Mario Kart DS. So it seemed only fitting that we get them some Mario Kart Hot Wheels cars for Christmas, and I can assure you these little vehicles were very well received :) I also thought that they would be fun subjects to photograph, and finally gave it a try on a recent evening after the sun was down and the kids weren’t yet in bed. They, like in last week’s picture of Link, helped me compose the shot: placement of cars, color and direction of lights, and even the aperture of the lens to control depth of field.

We didn’t use much in the way of colored lighting, but instead used normal white light but set to different color temperatures. I don’t remember exactly what we used, but we did make sure to include a bit of blue overhead light to add a bit of extra dimension to all the characters, and enhance the reflections a bit too. One of the fun things about this was figuring out the positions of all the racers, even Bowser way in the back. In the finished shot you can tell that there’s someone behind Waluigi, but can’t quite tell who, and those subtleties were really cool to play around with.

I used a pretty small aperture of f/32 to help keep depth of field under control, and used ISO 100 to keep the image as clean as possible. That gave me a shutter speed of 2 seconds, which might seem slightly ironic given that this is a shot of some very fast racers :) As you might expect though, the best part of this image was the experience of doing all this with my kids.

Way back when I first started shooting with my macro lens and Nanlite Pavotubes, I took a lot of photos using the best studio-like setup I had available: the top of our washing machine. It was a smooth, reflective, white surface that really helped highlight the subjects I was photographing while also giving me lots of opportunities to play with colored lighting. It quickly grew tiresome though, partly because the area was kind of cramped and also because…well, it’s a washing machine. I mean, it’s not exactly meant for taking photographs.

I have been thinking about other ways to replicate the general idea of the homemade washing machine studio but in a more practical fashion, and realized I could basically accomplish the same thing with a whiteboard we’ve had sitting in the living room that our friends gave us way back in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. (Has it really been four years? My goodness.) My kids and I designed this composition one evening after the sun had gone down, and after a few minutes of tinkering we got the setup you see here:

I wanted to capture the sense of Link (Breath of the Wild Link, that is) as if he were going into battle, about to face an overwhelming enemy or go into the deepest depths of a dungeon or shrine, and intentionally used a few things to make that happen. First, I had to consider how to place Link and what angle to shoot him from. I chose this pose because his body language, particularly his right hand holding the sword, was brave, courageous, and defiant–practically daring his foes to challenge him. I shot from slightly above partly to create a small sense of helplessness but also because of the more practical reason of needing to make sure the shot captured only the whiteboard, not our kitchen and living room which would have certainly been in frame had I used a lower angle. I focused on Link’s left eye and shot in manual to get full control over every element of exposure.

All pretty standard stuff, really.

What was really fun, though, was the lighting. I started with two Pavotubes and ended up with five, all different colors and all purpose placed to create the end result you see above. I used a blue light behind and above, paired with orange and red lights on the side, to create the gradient that makes it feel like Link is walking into a devious fire trap, most likely set by his arch-nemesis Ganon. I used one light on the left set to normal white but with a color temperature somewhere around 3000K to bring out a bit of Link’s natural colors, which can tend to get a little wonky if you shoot a scene like this using only colored lighting. The end result is a really fun photo not unlike this shyguy but with perhaps a bit more thought and care in terms of lighting.

I almost never post shots like this, which is probably what makes this one so much fun :) I remember years ago I took a picture of some tree bark and used it as one of my Weekly Fifty photos, but for the most part the images you see here, which are, by extension, the images I like to shoot, are much more simple and straightforward: subject, background, and maybe one or two other elements for added context. When I came upon this scene one very chilly morning, I initially dismissed it entirely because it just didn’t seem all that interesting. I mean, it’s just some ice on the street with a bit of water flowing beneath. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

But wait. Maybe there was something more. Something I could uncover with a macro lens.

When I looked a bit closer I realized that, despite the rather dull colors, this could still be an interesting composition simply by getting the subject (i.e. all the ice) in focus and the background (i.e. the pavement about one inch beneath the ice) out of focus. I didn’t have time to get a tripod and really compose the perfect shot, and I also didn’t want to spend too long on this instead of playing with my kids, so I just kind of squatted down on the street, aimed my camera straight down, and took a bunch of photos to see what would happen.

This, then, is the result and while I’m not particularly fond of it I do think it helped me learn a few things. For one, it’s just not that colorful and, all things considered, I generally like shots with more visual appeal or at least more than just white and brown. It’s also not as tack-sharp as I would like, which is one of the byproducts of ice at close-up ranges using autofocus. The camera simply doesn’t know what it’s looking at or what to focus on, and when you combine that with all the micro-movements of shooting handheld, well, you get what we have here. It’s fine if you see this on a phone but if you’re on a laptop or desktop and click through to the original on Flickr you’ll probably notice that the edges just aren’t as well-defined as I would prefer. But I do like the general idea here, with essentially two planes and nothing else, and the hole just to the right of center to let you see through to the pavement. It was a fun photo to take and was a great opportunity to stretch my creative muscles just a bit, and maybe next time I’ll be able to build on this and get something even better :)

Ok first things first: I know that this shot has nothing to do with tundra, either the natural biome or the pickup truck. But it does sort of, kind of, describe the image and I like the alliteration, so I’m sticking with it. Also, the scene here really is pretty small, so at least that part of the titular description remains unambiguously apt. This is a leaf on one of my neighbor’s boxwoods after a recent ice storm (is it correct to classify hours of sleet overnight as a storm?) covered in about a quarter-inch of frozen water, that I shot with my D750 and 105mm macro lens. I went around that morning, camera in hand, looking for any photo opportunities that presented themselves while also taking time to play with my kids who were slipping and sliding all over any paved surface. While it was fun to see the familiar scene around me, that of my front yard and indeed our whole neighborhood, with fresh new eyes thanks to the coating of ice, I was also surprised at how much, or rather, how little of it made for interesting photographs.

One nice thing about shooting with a macro lens is that when you’re not sure what to do, just get closer and you’ll often find that the solution, as Henry Jones would say, presents itself. That was certainly the case on this frozen morning, since even relatively boring things like boxwood leaves took on a whole new appearance thanks to the ice. But at the same time, the more I looked around the more I realized that there was this odd monotone color palette that overshadowed everything and made shots, even macro shots, a lot more challenging.

What I found interesting about the composition you see here is that it’s got a couple of things going on besides the ice, and in fact the ice really does help add a new dimension to the image as well as the subject. There’s a single yellow leaf in the foreground, some green leaves in the background, and the subject itself is shot in a profile that shows how thin it is while also giving the viewer a sense of just how much ice is covering everything. I shot this at f/13 so I could get the leaf sharp and in focus while also still having a nice soft foreground and background, and you can see some really cool texture on the edge of the ice if you zoom in on the original image on Flickr. Is this the best shot ever? No, but it was fun and it forced me to think about how to create interesting compositions in challenging circumstances, and I hope I get the opportunity to do more of this the next time we get another ice store. But hopefully that won’t be for a good long while.

While Oklahoma doesn’t have anywhere near the same level of brutal winters as our friends a few states to the north, we do have ice storms from time to time that effectively shut things down all across town. Such was the case recently when we all woke up to sheets of ice covering everything, and subsequently closing the public schools along with Oklahome State University and some other institutions too. That meant my wife and I could spend the day just kind of bumming around with our kids, and seeing what fun could be gleaned from the ice-covered outdoors right out our front door.

The thing about shooting pictures of nature in mid-January, at least where I live, is that there isn’t a whole lot of color. Everything is mostly just shades of dull brown and faded green, which means finding photo opportunities is a bit trickier than normal. Thankfully I was armed with my D750 and 105mm macro lens–the combo that has, in recent months, became my favorite kit for general creative photography. Basically when in doubt, just shoot up close :) It’s worked for me many times before, and it certainly worked here.

What you’re looking at is a single berry on one of our holly bushes outside the house, not only frozen in time in the form of a photograph but also, quite literally, just frozen right there under a coating of fresh ice. I shot this at f/8, partly so I could get a slightly larger depth of field but also so I could get the berry nice and sharp. I also dialed in -1 exposure compensation because I’ve learned that my D750 just can’t meter properly when shooting outdoors on a snowy or icy day. It almost always overexposes, so I just manually underexpose and then adjust in Lightroom if I really need to. I really wanted to get my tripod to help with this shot but ended up doing it handheld, mostly because I just didn’t feel like going to the trouble. I do think it would have been worth it though, and probably serves as a lesson for what to do next time. Not that I’m looking forward to the next ice storm, but hopefully when it arrives I’ll be prepared :)