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

One thing about living in central Oklahoma that I never knew until we moved here in 2009 is that most homeowners wage a continual war against the little purple plant you see here. Henbit is a scourge among front lawn everywhere, and as the days lengthen and the sun crawls back from the winter doldrums, this plant inevitable returns to almost any grassy area untouched by the herbicide sprayed by the truckload by homeowners and groundskeepers all over town. My wife and I have never been ones to douse our yard with weed killer and instead just kind of do our best to ignore the henbit and other similar annoyances until they fade away by the start of summer, and that means we get to (have to?) see these little violet buds all over the place in springtime. And when my brother and his family were visiting in mid-March, I discovered how beautiful these can be as photo subjects.

There’s only a few minutes each day when you can take a picture like this one, and it’s all due to the angle of the sun. This henbit flower is usually found, as is the case here, about 2-4 inches from the ground. During most of the day the sun is at too high of an overhead angle to get the nice backlighting you see here, and in the early morning or evening as the sun is at just the right angle it quickly moves away from that position rendering this type of picture nearly impossible. As my brother and I were walking around outside while our kids threw frisbees and kicked soccer balls, he made a remark about the purple flowers and it got both of us thinking about possible macro shots. I got way down low (I can’t remember if I actually laid on the ground, but I might have. I know my brother did.) and dialed in a pretty small aperture of f/19 and took a few shots. It quickly became clear that the main issue here was the angle of my camera, not the sun. I had to shoot almost directly into the sun in order to capture the backlighting, but also be careful to not wash out the image with excess lens flare. After some experimentation I got the shot you see here, and I think it works really well.

This is the final of a series of pictures that I’m posting here on Weekly Fifty from my brother’s visit, and I can confidently say that I did indeed learn an awful lot while he was here. Not necessarily from a photography perspective, but more about observing the world around me and taking advantage of opportunities I often miss. Seeing the world through fresh eyes, especially my own yard, helped me find picture ideas I have overlooked hundreds of times over the years. And besides that, it’s just super cool to hang out with my brother and his family :)

I’m not sure what to think about this picture. It reminds me of a similar shot I took years ago with my 50mm lens and set of close-up filters, though the visual qualities (save for the amount of color) in this one far surpass the original: it’s much sharper with a more pleasing background falloff, which is what you get when you use an actual macro lens instead of faking it with filters. However, when you consider that the latter costs a mere fraction of the former, you can’t point out too many flaws and even after all this time I’m still surprised at how effective those little glass screw-on macro filters can really be. It’s a lesson in one of my favorite aspects of photography, that of growth and change. Rather than looking at the original shot and thinking about its faults, it’s much more useful to see a progression over time and evidence of learning and, ultimately, change, as a result.

Anyway, so back to this bolt on a fence post :)

I shot this when my brother and his family were visiting in mid March, and I was once again reminded of the joys of discovering photo opportunities right in your own back yard. Or, rather, your neighbor’s back yard. He has a macro lens also, and whenever he and I get together we make it a habit of just wandering around and seeing what pictures present themselves even when we least expect it, and the result of such searching is what you see here. We were walking and chatting and photographing while all our kids played frisbee in the field across the street, and he pointed out this rusty bold on a fence that I have probably seen a thousand times over the years but never considered as a picture subject. I brought my lens close, adjusted the aperture, shifted the angle that I was pointed at, and fired off a handful of clicks on the shutter while continuing to play around with my exposure values.

What I noticed right away was that the pictures I took at much smaller apertures were…well, they weren’t great. I have learned that when I take close-up pictures I generally need the aperture to be much smaller than traditional images, but shooting at f/11 seemed to be ideal here. It struck a good balance between subject sharpness and background blur, whereas f/22 made the chain links behind this bolt much clearer and, as a result, more distracting. I also intentionally composed the image such that there was a bit of foreground blur as well, which is something I have learned I quite enjoy including in macro shots. In the end this won’t go down as one of my top-ten favorites or anything, but it was a fun learning experience and helped me to see some progression since getting those screw-on filters years ago. And it’s that sense of growth and change which makes all the difference.

This is a style of picture that I have found I really enjoy creating with my macro lens. It’s a pretty basic composition, with one clear subject in the middle isolated almost entirely from the background, and a secondary object (in this case, a tree branch) going through the frame to catch the viewer’s gaze after initially focusing on the primary subject. It’s not a complicated composition and, in fact, it’s remarkably similar to what I put up on Weekly Fifty last week, but it’s a fun type of picture to create and I still find it challenging and rewarding even after all these years.

There were several things to consider when I took this picture: which group of bulbs to use as my subject (the tree I was standing near was positively brimming with these little flower clumps), how to position myself so the branch was at just the right angle, what to have in the background behind the subject, and how much to isolate the main clump of buds from the rest of its counterparts all over the tree. I took a few shots a bit farther out that showed more of the branch and some additional surroundings, but as I was looking through my pictures I decided that this one was really the standout since it left no question as to what was the focal point of the image while also including just a bit of color in the foreground and background to add a smidgen of context.

As with any macro shot the aperture was of primary consideration, and thankfully even though the sky was overcast there was still plenty of light to shoot at f/13 and still get a nice low ISO of 360. The single bulb in the foreground (which was less than 1/4″ in diameter, just to give a sense of the small size of what you’re looking at) is nice and sharp with the rest slowly becoming blurry, and that was precisely the effect I was aiming for. I’m pleased that it worked out well, though if I could change one thing about this image it would be the bland background. My shot from last week had a nice bright blue sky and a bit of backlighting, and I think that kind of effect would have been fun to see here. I guess I’ll just have to keep my eyes open for similar opportunities in the next few weeks as things warm up and spring starts to show its colors all around.

I used to think these flowers were from the Dogwood tree, but I’m pretty sure they are actually found on Bradford Pears. I think. Like I’ve said many times on here I’m no botanist or arborist or any kind of -ist, really, but I do like going out and taking pictures (photographist?) of the world around me and that’s really all I did here. This is almost an example of the kind of picture you can get right in your very own back yard, but to apply that common description would be a bit misleading here: this is not, in fact, my own back yard. However, the tree does belong to my neighbor and this branch was hanging over the fence into my yard so I guess it’s really an issue of semantics. In any case, this flower was practically begging to be photographed when I saw it on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-March and I was glad to oblige.

One of my favorite ways to enjoy photography is simply doing it with another person, and that’s exactly how this image came about. I often find that when I’m walking around taking pictures with someone else I’m able to see things, even familiar everyday objects and scenes, with a fresh, new perspective that brings out a lot of picture-taking opportunities I don’t usually see. I shot this while hanging out in the yard with my brother, his wife, and their kids who came down for a visit over Spring Break while my brother and I were just kind of walking around, our cameras at the ready, catching up on life and looking for some fun photo opportunities. He saw a branch full of flowers bending lazily over the fence, brought his camera and macro lens up to his eye, and started taking some pictures. I felt almost a bit silly right there in the moment: for all my talk about looking for photo opportunities in everyday life, here was a great one that I see literally every single day but didn’t even think about until my brother showed up and put a new perspective on the ordinary.

I quickly followed his lead and started taking some shots of my own, not really expecting much or thinking they would turn into anything particularly special, but when I loaded my RAW files into Lightroom I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw. The rich purples on the petals, the bright blue sky, and the tree branch bisecting the frame and adding a bit of energy to the image, all came together to form a macro shot that I like a lot. It was a really fun reminder about one of those fundamental aspects of photography that I need to remember more often.

If this pictures gives you a bit of deja vu, your brain is probably on to something. It’s remarkably similar to this one I took back in November, and that’s actually the reason I almost didn’t take this week’s picture at all. It seemed too derivative, too uninspired, and possibly even too boring to be an interesting shot. But the thing is, when I saw this jar of sugar sitting on the counter one warm Saturday morning while I was eating breakfast with my son, it just seemed like it was begging to be photographed. So I picked up my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, clicked the shutter a few times, and got the image you see here. I like to think of it more as a shot that was inspired by the original five months earlier rather than a cheap sequel or copy of it. Perhaps that’s just some kind of semantic nonsense, but I felt like I learned something by taking this picture and that’s all I need :)

The original shot used a 20-ounce soup mug that I used for tea as its main subject, but in the months since then I have migrated to coffee which I like to sweeten a teaspoon of sugar and a bit of half-and-half. I keep the sugar in this little jar that you see here and, after pouring my second cup of coffee for the morning, I scooped out a bit of sugar and left the jar sitting on the counter while I talked with my son over breakfast. The sun soon cast its morning rays through the kitchen window and the sugar jar began to take on an almost otherworldly appearance: glowing in the golden rays, the sugar inside taking on what almost seemed like its own inner light, the silverware sitting in the dish rack behind sparkling with a particular vibrance that only shows up in that special slice of time right as the day is getting started.

Clearly, I had to capture the moment in photo form.

I shot this at f/3, 1/180 second, ISO 160, and from just a slight upward angle as if to heighten the presence of the jar and showcase the bright points of light dancing off the forks and spoons in the background. I think the shot works pretty well as-is, but if I had to do it again I might do more of a straight-on composition to make the scene feel more homely and less monolithic, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even so, the shot does a pretty solid job of capturing the essence of the scene as I saw it while sitting at the table, and is a fun reminder of the beauty that we can find even in everyday ordinary things around us. Like a little jar of sugar.