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

I don’t mind being more than a little out of the loop. I’m usually not the first person to jump on new social or technological trends, and I can’t really tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray. It’s nice existing relatively free from the one-upsmanship that sometimes exists in other circles, but this photo is kind of a very small example of how it’s a little weird at the same time.

I was biking to work on a cool morning in mid October when I saw the fountain outside the Low Library on campus filled with…pink ducks. Why pink ducks? I dunno. Strange things happen on a college campus sometimes, and you just have to go with the flow or go mad trying to make sense of it all. I didn’t really try to make sense of it or figure out these ducks’ raison d’être, but I did think that the scene might make an interesting photo. I hopped off my bike, busted out my Classic Combo (D7100 + 50mm f/1.8) and got to work.

One thing I didn’t want to do was create some type of artificial scene. I’m not sure exactly why, but I felt like it wouldn’t be right to pose the ducks or otherwise alter the scene just to get a photograph. Even though the entire ordeal was artificial, I wanted to essentially just work with what I was given and not create some type of false photogenicity. (Is that even a word? If not, it should be.) I looked around to see if I could spot a single duck isolated from the rest, and soon I settled on the one you see here. As luck, and time of day, would have it there was a bright yellow bulb in the background which showed up as a really cool bokeh ball when shot with a wide aperture. Really the only thing I changed in this picture was the aperture; I didn’t move my camera forwards or backwards, and once I lined up my shot in Live View (because I had to set my camera on the edge of the fountain which made it tricky to see through the optical viewfinder) the only question was which aperture to use. I cycled through the old standbys: 1.8, 2.4, 2.8, and 4 and wasn’t really sure which one I liked best. It never hurts to have some options though. In the end I ended up picking the f/1.8 image because the silky smooth background was just too good to take a pass on. The other shots were fine but the more the pink ducks in the background became clearer as the aperture got smaller, the more distracting they got and the less interesting the composition became.

My only regret with this image is that I didn’t take the duck’s reflection into account. If I had been more careful I would have scooted my camera back an inch or two in order to get the full reflection in the frame, but I’m just glad I got its eyes.

Side note: A week later I did find out why these ducks were in the fountain. The OSU Wellness Center organized an event to raise awareness for breast cancer, and I happened to stumble on the scene right before all the ducks were cleaned up later that day.

For a good long while now, one of my favorite subjects to photograph on an annual basis is (are?) magnolia seeds, particularly those on the periphery of Theta Pond on the OSU campus. It’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel, because it’s almost difficult to not get a good picture of these brilliant red and brown husks: just point your camera and press the shutter. The brilliant reds contrasting with the rich browns, with deep greens in the background, almost always come together to create a brilliant composition of light and nature. My challenge, then, becomes one of growth and change. How can I take a new look at a similar subject and turn the familiar into something a little more interesting compared to what I might have photographed in years past?

Part of the answer lies in something I have been using more on my DSLRs lately: Live View. Traditionally I have relied on the optical viewfinder to compose my shots, finding the Live View to be a bit clunky and in some ways not exactly a good representation of reality. Plus, Live View on DSLRs (generally speaking, that is) just isn’t up to speed with traditional Optical Viewfinders in terms of autofocus and some other aspects that often matter to me. But I’m learning that for still subjects, particularly those found in nature like flowers and, well, magnolia seed pods, Live View holds some highly compelling creative possibilities. In fact, Live View is what made this shot possible.

What separates this particular shot of a magnolia seed pod from other similar photos I have taken over the years is the attention I paid to the background. Not just the blurriness, but the specific areas of light and shadow–particularly the bright white circles framing the seed pod on the left side. If you know what to look for (and I have, to some degree, learned what to look for) you can look for the conditions that will create these light artifacts and then shoot accordingly by using the optical viewfinder. But the thing about an optical viewfinder is, you can’t really see what you finished shot will look like until you check it on the rear screen. The OVF simply doesn’t show a true representation of what the final photo will look like because the aperture of the lens changes from the time you focus your shot and the time you take your shot the very next instant. Because of that, Live View becomes exceedingly useful for situations like this and it’s one reason the transition to fully mirrorless shooting excites me so much.

To get this shot I first found a seed, then found an angle from which to shoot it, then used Live View to compose my shot, and then adjusted my aperture to f/2.8 to retain subject sharpness while still giving enough background blurriness. It also helped that I could hold my camera above my head to get the shot, whereas the optical viewfinder would have required me to hold my camera up to my face instead of at arm’s length. The result is an image unlike any other magnolia seed I have shot, not because of the seed but because of everything surrounding it. The background is what makes the shot here, and even the foreground to some extent. It was a fun picture to take, and it gives me some creative ideas about how to get more shots like this in the future.

I’ll give you three guesses as to where I shot this photo, and the first two don’t count. Unless Theta Pond was one of the first two, in which case, you win! Not sure what you win, but I’ll let you know when I find out. This was taken about 50 feet away from last week’s image of a duck sitting on the sidewalk, and even though it’s not actually that great of a picture I wanted to use it here on Weekly Fifty because I just like taking shots of things in the rain. There’s something about the way everything in this image glistens and sparkles that, despite the relatively monochromatic nature of the photo, gives it a sense of life and vibrance. Normally I would prefer that the subject, in this case the seed on a Cypress tree, would have something to make it stand out from the rest of the composition. A different color, certainly, but maybe a greater sense of contrast or even a bit of kinetic energy. Something, anything, besides a green ball against a (mostly) green background.

Even so, I like to see even mundane pictures like this as a chance to grow and learn, and usually there is something to appreciate even if it doesn’t always present itself right away. In this case even though this is not one of my top ten (or even top 200) photos I’ve ever posted here on Weekly Fifty, I do like the bright spots of light on the left side and the streak of brown going across the middle. Almost like it’s bisecting the image, and in some sense the blurry dots of light almost make it seem like the picture is shimmering. If you look close enough you can even see some very tiny spider silk threads around some of the needles.

It’s just that the picture as a whole is so…unremarkable. But it was enjoyable to take, and it gave me a chance to use my camera which is always a good thing.

I’ve said before that sometimes it feels like photos of ducks by Theta Pond on campus feels a bit like cheating. Visit the pond on any given day and you’re liable to get at least one good shot of a duck or goose doing something interesting, and if not you can always just bring some food with you to get their attention. A minute later and you’ve got yourself an instant photo-op. Still, there are a few types of waterfowl photos that are a little trickier to get, particularly with a 50mm lens. Even though these animals live on a college campus they are still a bit skittish around people and it’s hard to get a great shot of a duck or goose really close up, and even when they do get close they’re often moving around so quickly you can’t really get a great photo. All that leads me to this week’s shot.

I took my Classic Combo (D7100 and 50mm f/1.8 lens) to work with me on a rainy day in mid-September, thinking I might be able to get a shot of a flower or thistle glistening with precipitation. I brought it in my bag when I went to teach my class and after the students left I took the long way around Theta Pond back to my office. It had stopped raining but the sky was still quite overcast, and I was hoping I could get a shot of some kind of bright, colorful flower amidst all the gray. As I walked along the edge of the pond I stepped quietly past this duck who, in a rather strange twist of fortune, barely acknowledged my presence. Normally any ducks on the footpath scatter when they see people coming, but not this one. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the calm weather, maybe it was the relative lack of college students thanks to a semester in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Who knows. But for some reason this duck just stayed put while I walked by, so I thought I might as well try to take its picture.

I held my camera pretty close to the ground, engaged Live View, set the aperture to f/2.8, focused, and took a shot. It was OK, but I knew I could do better.

I put my camera on the ground, tilted it up, engaged Live View, set the aperture to f/2.4, and took a shot. It was a little better, but I knew I could keep going.

I scooted a few inches closer and repeated the same process, but with the aperture varying between f/1.8 and f/2.4. I knew 1.8 would give me a super blurry background, but at the cost of overall sharpness, and yet I found myself taking more than a few shots wide open nonetheless. I kept the framing in mind, making sure to get the entire duck in the shot with a little space on either side, and much to my surprise the duck just sat there unmoving, except for a bit of preening. I wonder if it was just as curious about me as I was of it, but for some reason it just stayed there while I took my photos, quietly minding her business while I went about mine.

A minute later I got up, grabbed my bag, and went on my way. When I loaded my images into Lightroom I could hardly believe the results: the most important part of the image–the duck’s eye–was sharp. Tack sharp. The background had a beautiful mix of rich greens and light accents, and the foreground was as smooth as butter. Everything really seemed to come together and work out with this shot, and I don’t imagine I’ll get the opportunity to take another photo like this again anytime soon.

Thank you, Duck, for letting me take your picture. It’s really cool when things just work out :)

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.