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

It might not seem like there’s a whole lot to this picture, but in a lot of ways it represents the culmination of many years of practice, patience, and education.

But it’s a goose, right? I mean, how complicated could this picture possibly be? The answer is, a lot more than you might think.

Theta Pond, on the OSU campus, is inhabited by geese pretty much year-round. Only in the coldest months of winter will you not find geese swimming or otherwise milling about, but despite their ubiquity they do tend to keep a safe distance when it comes to pedestrians and passers-by. Despite seeing geese almost every time I go for a walk around the pond, I have only a handful of good pictures of them–even when I use my 70-200 f/2.8 zoom lens. And none of my geese pictures are up close and personal like the one you see above, mostly because the geese just don’t let people get very close. There’s a host of other elements that have to be line up just right too: lighting, wind, pedestrians, other geese, wayward squirrels, and even some ducks that like to cause trouble for their avian cousins. What this all boils down to is the simple fact that despite having a near-constant presence of geese at Theta Pond, getting a picture like this turns out to be fairly difficult.

I was walking near the pond in early April when, as is not uncommon, I happened upon a goose just sort of chilling on the sidewalk in the afternoon sun. I had my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens with me, but I didn’t think I would have much luck with a picture since these situations usually result in the goose taking leave of the situation long before I can get a shot that I like. This time, however, things were a bit different. I knelt down and crept close to the goose…and it didn’t move. It just eyed me cautiously, but with a sense of curiosity as well. I put my camera in Live View so I could hold it about a foot off the ground with the tile-screen facing upward while I slowly closed the distance between me and the bird. I took a couple of pictures, almost holding my breath thinking that the goose would hiss at me and fly away at any second. And yet it remained.

I kept taking pictures while slightly adjusting the aperture and changing my own angle of view so as to catch a glint of sunlight in the goose’s eye. The goose just sat there, unfazed by me and my camera, and let me go about my business for a precious few more seconds. Soon it decided it had enough of my camera shenanigans and got up to relocate while leaving me to contemplate my good fortune. This was my favorite picture of the batch, and even thought I shot it at a fairly wide aperture of f/4 the depth of field remains well-controlled, and I like that the front part of the bird’s beak is just slightly out of focus. It adds a sense of depth that was not present in some of my other shots.

Bonus: If you click on the picture to load the original full-size version on Flickr and zoom way, way in on the eye you can actually see a reflection of me kneeling down on the sidewalk to get the shot :)

In case you’re keeping track of these sorts of things (and if not, I don’t blame you since I barely am) this is the first 50mm photo I’ve had on Weekly Fifty all year. My 2013 self would likely respond with righteous incredulity, but my goal for this blog from day one was to be a tool that I could use to learn and grow as a photographer—with or without a 50mm lens. And it just so happens that after getting a true macro lens, after shooting with close-up filters for so many years, almost immediately opens your eyes to a boat-load of new photographic opportunities suddenly available. Hence the last four months of Weekly Fifty pictures :) However, that doesn’t mean the old tried-and-true Nifty Fifty is suddenly irrelevant. Far from it! I don’t think I will ever stop using my 50mm lens, but I certainly do enjoy venturing out with other lenses to see what kinds of images I can make.

I shot this picture when my family and I were out geocaching with some friends at the local Botanic Garden. I had my D750 and 50mm lens because it’s a way better walkaround option compared to a 105mm macro lens, and I was able to get some really fun pictures of all the little ones playing together and finding hidden secrets around the area. After a little while we took a bit of a break and the kids found this cat wandering around one corner of the gardens, just sort of hanging out and keeping an eye on all the strange two-legged creatures constantly walking through what was clearly its own territory. Thankfully the orange feline was kind enough to let the kids pet it and play with it, and when I wanted to get in close for a picture it happily obliged. Or maybe it just happily ignored me. I’m not sure. But either way, I was able to get a picture so that’s all that matters to me.

I shot this at f/1.8 because well why not. It was fun to take a fairly simple but effective image with a clear subject, bright colors, good contrast, and a smooth blurry background. The cat’s eye is tack sharp, the colors of its fur contrast with the dark green background, and it looks like it sees something interesting on the horizon which invites the viewer to speculate on what in the world it might be. (Spoiler alert: I think it was a shrubbery.) This is a great example of an image that’s pretty basic but a lot of fun to shoot, and the kind of picture you can’t really get with a mobile phone and auto-blurring software.

Earlier this year I posted a photo of some water droplets suspended in midair that I shot near the southeastern corner of the Oklahoma State University campus. Even though that image didn’t turn out exactly how I had hoped, I treated it as a learning experience and wanted to find ways to improve on the overall concept, since what good is it, I ask you, if we learn nothing from our mistakes? (A rhetorical question, obviously, but one that is always worth asking no matter how often it is repeated.) More than anything, I wanted to solve the issue of the water droplets in the original being just slightly blurry—the result, so I thought, of Vibration Reduction accidentally being enabled on my lens while shooting with a tripod. So I returned to the same spot weeks later with the same gear (105mm f/2.8 Macro lens and my Nikon D500) to see if I could rectify my mistakes and produce a better image.

In short…I did not. Despite shooting at 1/8000 second and disabling Vibration Reduction, the same problem remained: a slight bit of motion blur on the water droplets. I was a little surprised at the result since I had been so certain of the cause of the motion blur, but rather than pack my bags and head out I instead decided to go for something different entirely. Rather than use the water drops as my subjects, I found a tiny purple flower about one inch in diameter and decided to shoot that while using the the falling water as a background. I think it worked, but this gives me even more ideas to try in the coming weeks and months…

Probably the trickiest part about getting this shot was focusing on the flower. I had to use Live View since the whole setup was about 18 inches off the ground and I couldn’t really hunch down to look through the viewfinder, but unfortunately the Live View focusing in DSLRs is pretty bad for moving subjects like a tiny flower in the midst of a blowing breeze. I played with the aperture a bit, erring on the smaller side to give me a bit more depth of field wiggle room, and after many shots I finally got the one you see here. Strangely, the one thing that makes this photo work is the one thing I didn’t consider at all: tiny itty bitty drops of water on the flower itself. There were a couple of shots without those drops and they just don’t have the same punch or visual impact as this one, and I’m super thankful for that bit of serendipity that ended up elevating this image from mundane to…well, something a lot more interesting to look at :)

It’s interesting where you can find inspiration for photography sometimes. My brother Phil and his wife came down for a visit recently and over the course of a few days he and I spent a lot of time talking about photography techniques, experiments, and of course, gear. We played around with my 105mm f/2.8 macro lens a lot, finding interesting ways to shoot everyday subjects and looking for creative photographic possibilities out in the yard or just around the house. One such opportunity cropped up when the four of us (me, him, and our wives) were played a board game called Concept late into the evening after all the kids were asleep. The game itself was really fun, but what captured our interest even more was the colorful translucent pieces that you place on the board throughout your turn.

The more we looked at the rich greens, blues, reds, and yellows the more we thought they would make for an interesting close-up shot. We started with one single piece—the green question mark—and worked outward from there, with my Nikon D750 resting on the table in Live View as we composed the various elements of the shot. Phil toyed around with foreground and background elements, namely the little colored squares and tall exclamation marks, while I tried different solutions for how to light the image. We ended up using an iPhone in flashlight mode off to one side to get the lighting just right, and Phil carefully arranged pieces in the foreground and background until they looked like what you see here. We shot with an f/3.3 aperture which seemed a bit overkill at first due to super shallow depth of field, but the background out-of-focus elements looked so smooth that we didn’t want to go any smaller than that.

This is one of those shots that works fairly well on its own, but also tells a fun story if you know the context for the image. When I look at this I of course see a green question mark but what comes to my mind is a fun evening of hanging out with family, and that means a lot more to me than any one simple photograph.

There are some types of images that I have realized I just enjoy taking. And, conversely, there are some styles of photography that don’t interest me whatsoever. Street photography definitely falls into the latter category for me, as does most animal and wildlife photography: I don’t really have the patience for either one, and when it comes to taking pictures of random pedestrians and passers-by, I just feel icky. (I know some people are great at street photography, but it’s just not my thing.) This image, however–the one you see at the top of this post–is one that I find great joy in capturing. It’s simple, straightforward, and in my opinion, interesting to look at. It invites no deep interpretation and offers no life lessons to the viewer, but it makes me happy to take pictures like this and that’s all I need.

I shot this not by my traditional location of Theta Pond on the OSU campus, but just south of the Whitehurst administration building. I was walking past a tree with a friend of mine when I saw this one single orange leaf hanging out all by its lonesome amidst a sea of its green counterparts, and thought it would make an interesting photo. I had my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 lens with me and quickly realized that the sun was at a good spot on the horizon for me to capture the leaf with a pleasant amount of backlighting. One thing I really appreciate about shooting with my macro lens is that I don’t have to compromise in terms of distance to my subjects. I can get super close, super far, or anywhere in between. Sure the lens works great for getting really close, but it doesn’t have to be used that way. You can take normal shots of everyday things as close or as far as you want, and it’s fine. And that’s how I got this image you see here.

The usual questions applied: aperture, shutter speed, etc. (I never think about ISO anymore.) F/2.8 didn’t work since almost none of the leaf was in focus, so I stopped down to f/4. Same result. F/8 was the sweet spot: a good balance of subject sharpness and background blurriness. All this came together in a matter of seconds, perhaps a minute at best, and then my buddy and I resumed our walk. It’s nice to have the tools and experience to be able to capture photos like this without making a big deal out of it :)