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

If you looked at this picture and did a bit of a double-take, thinking that it bears more than a passing similarity to the image I used to close out 2022, you would not be incorrect. I used a very similar process to create both images, and while they are clearly related in terms of compositional elements, I think both are distinct enough from one another to use them as separate Weekly Fifty shots. I actually considered swapping the order such that this image would be used last week and vice versa, but in the end I’m just using them as-is and moving on with things. I really don’t like to over-analyze my photography that much :)

The techniques I used to create this shot are pretty similar to what I did last week: find a small Christmas Tree ornament and place it in front of my macro lens. Then find a few other ornaments to augment the background, adjust a couple of the small colored lights on the tree, adjust the aperture, set the self-timer, and take the shot. As I am wont to do when shooting close-up subjects, I adjusted the aperture from very large to moderately small in order to get just the right combination of subject sharpness and background blur, all while leaving my ISO set to 100 and using a shutter speed of as long as I needed in order to get a properly-exposed image. Even the overall setup, as you can see below, looks pretty similar to last week:

So why use both images, given that they share so many similarities? The answer lies in something I most certainly did not expect, but have really come to appreciate: this week’s photo looks entirely different when viewed on a small screen. I didn’t see it initially when I edited the RAW file on my 27″ iMac, but when I shrank this image down to just a few inches to send it to my brother Phil, I noticed an entirely new composition that was hidden right in front of me the whole time.

Initially, I just saw this as a cool shot of a tiny moon-shaped ornament with some blurred lights behind it. But when I looked at the same image on my iPhone instead of a giant computer monitor, it morphed into an interstellar scene complete with at least two planets and perhaps even a sun. The silver ball I hung in the background to create a lighting effect suddenly looked like a ringed planet–a miniature Jupiter or Neptune–and the colored lights dancing on its surface might as well be lightning storms in space. I was shocked, and thought about the many times that I have encouraged people to click through to Flickr from this website to look at the full-resolution version of an image but this might be the first time ever I am openly asking people to do the opposite and view a picture on a very small screen :)

Anyway, I thought this was a fun and unexpected moment of photographic serendipity, which would be a neat way to ring in the new year and think about other picture opportunities that lie ahead in the coming months.

I have said time and time again, and I continue to mean what I say, that I don’t make a habit of having posts on Weekly Fifty coincide with specific times of the year or other such milestones. That being said, I do still get a bit wistful near the end of December and maybe, just maybe, try to take a picture or two that hearkens to this particular season. Not always, mind you, but occasionally. Sometimes. Every now and then.

And this, as you can probably tell, is one of those such times. I don’t know that anything about this picture has to do with closing out the year 2022, but I do hope the subject matter, the colors, the contrast between light and dark…the whole composition, really…makes you think about chilly winter nights and maybe, just maybe, a cozy evening by the Christmas tree with family and friends.

Or maybe not. Maybe this doesn’t do anything for you at all, and if that’s the case, then that interpretation is completely valid and as good of a way of interpreting meaning from this image (if any is able to be gleaned at all) as any other. Anyway, what you’re looking at here is a close-up shot of a Christmas ornament hanging from our tree. The setup is pretty simple, as you can see here:

Just to be clear: this shot was no accident. I created the image using a specific combination of ornaments, lighting, and the position of my camera (as well as the usual exposure settings, of course) and also no small degree of patience. I don’t remember where we got this particular ornament but I enjoy its message, despite living in Oklahoma where we only rarely get snow and even more rarely have snow on Christmas. Perhaps it’s the Minnesotan in me still poking out every now and then :) In any case, the ornament by itself didn’t make for all that interesting of a picture. What I really tried to do here was craft a complete composition using other objects in the background—namely the red wire tree, but also a silver bell, of sorts, that is hanging just behind the red tree which you can’t really see in the shot. I positioned those background ornaments, as well as some of the lights on the tree, to create a scene that was full of multicolored points of light reflecting off the surface of the ornament and also creating something to look at besides just the main subject.

I shot this at f/11 on my 105mm macro lens, ISO 100, and a 2-second exposure which is where my patience really started to wear thin. The ornament had a habit of twisting back and forth at the smallest provocation, which meant that even my kids walking through the other room created enough vibration to sully the shot. However, it didn’t take long until I had the image I was going for and was able to put away my camera and get back to what really matters: my family.

And with that I hope you had a good Christmas and are looking forward to a 2023 full of new opportunities, surrounded by love from family and friends. May God bless you now and throughout the new year, whatever that may bring.

If you saw last week’s photo, this shot of a leaf on the water should be pretty familiar to you. And to be honest, I thought about not using it at all for this week’s picture because not only is it so similar to last week’s, but I shot it about five minutes after taking the other one too. Is it really fair to put up two photos that are so alike, taken in such close (physical and temporal) proximity? Well it is my blog, and I do get to decide…so why not? :) Also, though this post is coming a mere four days before Christmas, the theme of the photo is decidedly unrelated to the impending holiday. Read nothing into that! I schedule my Weekly Fifty posts several weeks in advance, and as I write this on November 11, there just isn’t too many Christmas-related photo opportunities around me.

Anyway, on to the photo. Though it bears more than a passing resemblance to its counterpart from last week, it also contains some notable differences. The first, and most noticeable, is obviously the presence of many other objects on the surface of the water. Namely, several brown cypress needles along with one bit of greenery that hasn’t quite given up the ghost. Or, at least, had not as of the time I took the photo. There’s clearly one main subject–the yellow leaf–but lots of other things on the same focal plane almost as if to complement the subject or at least add some context and visual flair to the photo. Subtle indentations in the surface tension are a bit more abundant in this image as well, and one thing you don’t see are the (probably more than one hundred) bits of dirt and dust that I removed from the image in Lightroom. There’s always more, but at some point it becomes a bit reductive, and at some point I just said “enough is enough” and uploaded the picture to Flickr in the state that you see it here.

Just like last week’s, this was a lot of fun to take. I bent out over the bank of Theta Pond with my D750 and macro lens held up to my eye, used my traditional technique of back-button-focusing to keep the leaf nice and sharp, and fired off a couple dozen shots as the scene shifted and changed below me right before my eyes. I like that this shot has basically two distinct layers: the surface of the water and everything underneath, which was only a few inches away but very blurry due to the ultra-shallow depth of field inherent when taking close-up shots like this.

Since taking this shot the weather has shifted and I think the throngs of winter might finally be here to stay, though doubtless we will still see plenty of pleasant days over the next several months. Even so, I think the photo opportunities around me will start to change dramatically, and as always at this time of year I’m excited to see what’s coming just around the corner.

Merry Christmas, everyone. God bless you all :)

I have written a few times about how one of my favorite types of photos to take is also one of the simplest possible in terms of composition: a clear subject against a blurry background. These kinds of pictures are not going to rock the boat or win any awards for creativity, but they are supremely fun and rewarding to take and I feel like every time I shoot a picture like this I learn something from it. This one is a slightly different take on that same theme because the subject isn’t really in front of the background, but more on top of the background. Perhaps that’s just some silly semantic fiddling, but while it might not matter in terms of the final result it mattered a great deal for how I arrived at the final result.

I took this photo while out on a walk around Theta Pond at Oklahoma State University about two days before we were hit with a really bad cold front. It was a rather warm Tuesday afternoon and I had my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens with me, and when I saw this little leaf floating near the edge of the pond I thought it would make for a great photo opportunity. Turns out taking a photo of said leaf was a lot easier to conceptualize than it was to execute.

I needed a good vantage point from which to take this picture, and really the only option was to point my camera straight down at the leaf. Since Live View autofocus on the D750 is really slow (thanks to being contrast-detect instead of phase-detect) I instead had to kind of brace my feet awkwardly out to the side, lean out, put my camera up to my eye, look down through the viewfinder, and fire off as many shots as I could in rapid succession. The light on the water quickly complicated matters, as subtle ripples on the surface sent sunbeams scattering in all directions which dramatically interfered with the shot I was trying to take. Also, this leaf didn’t exactly stay put and I had to follow it as it floated along lazily by the bank. I used f/4.8 to get the leaf sharp while blurring the background, which was only a few inches below but when shooting a subject at such a close distance it doesn’t take much for things to get out of focus.

When I loaded this photo in Lightroom two things immediately surprised me that I did not notice while I was out by the pond. First, there were dozens and dozens of spots of dirt, dust, and other imperfections on the surface. I eliminated many of them with the Healing tool, but if you go to Flickr and look at the high-resolution original you’ll see hundreds of spots that still remain. (It was a matter of time, really: I didn’t want to spend all afternoon removing dust specks.)

The other cool little element about this picture that I didn’t notice in the moment is the tiny little fly using the leaf as its own personal watercraft. Just goes to show you never really know what you’re going to get when you go out to take pictures :)