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

One of my favorite lighting techniques, at least for artistic or experimental shots, is to light my subjects from behind. It’s not something that’s altogether intuitive for me, as it goes against much of what I learned when I first started getting into photography years ago, but I have tried to pay attention to how a little (or a lot) of backlighting can elevate and transform a photo and lift the mundane into something extraordinary. Case in point: this coleus plant, which I came across while wandering around the OSU Botanic Gardens with my family and some friends on a Saturday afternoon in early September. There are dozens of these brightly-colored plants all around the gardens and while they certainly are cool to look at, they somewhat ironically do not always make great photo subjects. (Or perhaps I’m just not looking closely, or thinking creatively, enough. A challenge, perhaps? Hmm…) That was not the case here.

This particular coleus was practically aflame in the afternoon sun, with the light bounding off the edges of these leaves to create a silhouette that gives the entire composition a feeling of life and energy–almost like a flame twisting and writing as it makes its way upwards. I had my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, which is an outstanding combination for an afternoon among nature, and once I had this shot in mind the next thing to consider was the aperture: Too small and the depth of field would be too wide. Too large and the edges of the leaf would not be in focus. I also had to consider the angle from which I was shooting, and the background behind the plant as well. Finally, I didn’t want to spend too long taking this shot because I also wanted to hang out with family and friends :)

I took this at f/19 which, while a bit smaller than I would have preferred, did help me meet my primary goals for the shot. I think a smaller aperture would have been possible with a bit more patience and experimentation, but again, time was of the essence. I do like how the border in the foreground of the leaf is (mostly) sharp and in focus while the back of the leaf is blurry, which shows just how crazy the DOF tolerances are when shooting close up. And this wasn’t even that close! This leaf, or rather collection of leaves, measures about five inches from left to right–certainly too big to be considered a macro shot, but a great example of how versatile a macro lens can be nonetheless.

In some ways this shot is an upgraded version of the sunrise image from last week, and even though the scale of the photos is entirely different the basic principles are kind of the same: lighting a subject from behind in order to get a glowing silhouette. It goes to show, or at least shows me anyway, that at the end of the day photography is often about the same basic principles that it always has been. It’s light and physics, and everything else is just details :)

This photo is a couple of things. First, it’s a decent shot of an early morning September sunrise. Not outstanding, mind you, but not half bad if I do say so myself. And I don’t mean that to be self-deprecating, just to say that if I were to rank my Best Sunrise Shots that I have taken over the years I don’t think this would be on it. That being said, I do quite like a few things about it: the trees in the foreground, the rich colors of the sky as dark fades away, and the bright ball of light as it crests the clouds. It’s got a few layers that lead your eye from foreground to background, and I also like how simple everything is. It’s just a basic picture of the sun coming up without a lot going on in the frame to overcomplicate things. It’s not great, but it’s also not awful. It’s fine, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

The other thing about this shot is what it could have been if only I had been able to take it ten, even five, minutes earlier. That’s not a regret per se, but just a statement of fact: had I been able to grab my camera and get outside just a slight bit sooner this image would be entirely different and, most likely, a lot more interesting too. What I was really going for here wasn’t the sun necessarily, but the silhouette of the clouds on the horizon. The wavy fractal lines burning bright with the sun behind them created an amazing view that I noticed shortly after I dropped my son off at school, and I hightailed it back home to get my camera to go take a picture. But the sun is a fickle celestial body and usually just won’t stay put, especially at dawn and dusk.

By the time I made it back home it was already halfway above the clouds! I ran inside, grabbed my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, hopped back in the car, and drove as fast as I could to the pasture two blocks east of our house. The sun was in a hurry, and so was I–but alas, like C3PO attempting to save his friends from the trash compactor, I wasn’t fast enough. In the few precious minutes it took me to get out of my car, walk across the road, and put the camera to my eye the sun had already crested the clouds and was well on its way. Blerg.

No matter! I did get this shot and a fun story to tell, and of course a learning experience too. And the next time I think there might be a good sunrise, I’ll be ready…

For years one of my favorite types of photos to take at Milford Lake during our annual family vacation is that of a setting sun. Unlike most other shots that one can create during a weekend getaway out in nature, there’s a temporal quality to sunset shots like this–something that you just can’t capture save for a fleeting moment at the end of day and, perhaps, in the early morning if one is so inclined. Each year my sunset pics look a bit different, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this year’s is better than the rest, it definitely shows evidence of refinement based on what I have done before.

I kept things real simple here in terms of gear: Nikon D750, 50mm lens (yes, the same lens that this blog is named after) and 10-stop ND filter. The camera itself was incidental; one could get almost the same shot with any cheap Nikon or Canon from Walmart. Full frame is not required to get a good sunset shot like this. The most important factors here were weather and composition: the former was basically just happenstance and entirely out of my control, but the latter involved understanding where to place the setting sun and the horizon within the frame and only comes with lots of experimentation, self-reflection, and looking at similar shots from other photographers. I have learned over the years that I enjoy sunsets the most when the sun itself is off-center, roughly along one of the vertical third lines, and the horizon roughly bisects the image. Too much foreground or too much sky tends to have a reductive effect on the photo as a whole, and my favorite sunset shots generally end up with more or less equal parts foreground and background.

There’s also two other fun elements in this shot that I just enjoy capturing: a silky-smooth lake surface and the brilliant starburst emanating from the setting sun. The former requires a long exposure (hence the 10-stop ND filter) and the latter requires a small aperture and good timing. If the sun is too high or too low you won’t get the points of light, and neither will they appear if your aperture is too wide which is why mobile phones can’t get shots like this. They are stuck at a fixed aperture usually between f/1.8 and f/2.2.

The result is a sunset shot that I am proud of, and one that does a good job of showing the natural beauty of Milford Lake—and hopefully helps show why I enjoy going there so much with my family each year.

This is one of those shots that’s so simple, so basic, and so easy to capture that it almost feels like cheating. This is not complicated in the least, and no special gear or equipment is required other than a camera, some vegetation, and the setting sun. But when done right, a picture like this can just knock it out of the park and do exactly what you might hope it would do: create some kind of feeling, emotion, or mood for the person who views it.

The basic idea here is super easy: find some kind of plant with a bit of color to it (I like wide blades midsummer of grass or tree leaves in the fall as they are changing colors) and position yourself such that the sun is behind it. Then get out your camera, open up the lens aperture, and start taking pictures. that all there is to it. The bright colors and brilliant light can end up making these types of photos some of my favorites that I have taken over the years. In fact, when my brother Phil and I were walking around on the shores of Milford Lake while some of the younger kids were fishing on the nearby dock, I had this picture in my mind that I had taken seven years prior on the Oklahoma State University campus. (I’m not kidding, I really was thinking of that shot. I really like it, and it was my phone background for a good long while.) When I saw a few blades of green grass that had turned to orange and red, along with the sun lowering on the horizon, I thought it would be a great opportunity to take another similar shot.

I used my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens but anyone could get this composition with a basic DSLR and 18-55mm kit lens. All I did was lower my point of view to take advantage of the backlighting, focus on the orange leaf on the left, open up my aperture to a decent-but-not-too-wide f/4.8, and fire off a couple of shots. I also played around with my position relative to the leaf, moving in and out just to try some different compositions while also experimenting with different aperture sizes but in the end this simple image just clicked in a way that none of the others really did. I like it a lot, and it’s now my iPad background :) I think this experience, especially in light of all the super close-up insect shots I have been taking lately, is a good reminder that photography doesn’t have to be fancy to be good. Sometimes just something basic and simple is all you need.

Almost every year when my family gets together at Milford Lake, Kansas, I like to go out at least one evening and take a picture of the sunset. Views like this aren’t something I see in my normal daily life in Oklahoma, so it’s fun to be able to try different kids of shots compared to my normal repertoire of bugs, insects, and scenes from Theta Pond on the OSU campus. While most of my family was up at the campfire I stole away for a few minutes to run down to the beach, set up my camera, and see if I could get something maybe a tad different from the similar compositions I had created in previous years. Not that there’s anything wrong with repeating a photo year after year, and I have certainly done just that more than a few times in the past decade or so, but it’s also fun to try something new. Novel, perhaps, or at least novel to me if not to other nature and landscape photographers.

What I eventually came up with was the idea of using my D750, 50mm lens, and 10-stop ND filter to smooth out the water (of course) but also to create a sense of wistful peacefulness in the foreground. Instead of focusing on the treeline with the setting sun in the background, I instead found a chunk of rock sticking up from the water right near the shore and got that nice and sharp even though it meant the background would be a bit blurry. (One of the consequences of a relatively inexpensive lens like the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G is that you sacrifice a small aperture; f/16 is as low as this lens will go, which means super deep focus is kind of out of the question. C’est la vie.) I set my ISO to 100, my shutter speed to 30 seconds, and got this image which is quite unlike most of the other pictures I can recall taking. It looks like the rock is shrouded in a fog or mist, but it’s really just small waves lapping against it as a hushed breeze barely breathed across the surface of the waters.

This was a fun picture to take and one that I hope to revisit in the future, possibly with the light behind me instead of in front of me, but that goes to show that if nothing else this at least gives me some new ideas to try which is always a good thing when it comes to photography :)