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

My brother Phil and I were talking about macro photography recently, and how nice it is to be able to envision a picture in your head and then know that you have both the experience and the gear to make that shot happen. It’s something I have really come to appreciate about lots of different types of photography, but especially close-up shots like this one. I used to see pictures in magazines or online publications and think that the people who took them had some kind of unreachable, unattainable mystic quality that allowed them to take such stunning images, but the more I learned and experimented with my own photography the more I realized that such things really were within my grasp. And the grasp of anyone, really. So when my kids and I were eating breakfast on a Friday morning, and I saw this jar of hot sauce sitting on the table with beads of condensation shimmering in the light, I immediately thought about taking a picture just like one I might see on some kind of product advertisement. And I knew I was pretty sure I could pull it off :)

I quickly ran to get my Nikon D750, 105mm macro lens, and tripod while also reminding my kids to eat their breakfast and try to finish before their mother was out of the shower. I scooted the bottle close to the camera, focused with the lens, and then set about tweaking all the little settings that make such a huge difference with close-up photography. The first thing I did was look for a way to eliminate the background, and for that I just put our iPad on a little vertical stand behind the bottle of hot sauce. Problem solved! Next I looked at the bottle and thought about what I wanted to photograph, and how to photograph it. I really liked the light reflecting off the condensation so I wanted that to be the main draw, but then also have enough of the bottle in the shot to provide a sense of overall context. Instead of moving my camera around I just scooted the bottle to different spots on the table until I found just the right location for this shot. (And again, as has become a recent custom…no cropping of the final image!)

Finally, the all-important aperture setting. F/4? F/8? F/22? I shot a few at wider apertures and then some at f/11, just in case I needed it but I thought f/8 would be the sweet spot. Turns out I was wrong–f/11 was the right one. When I loaded my shots into Lightroom I didn’t like the wider aperture shots at all, and in retrospect I think I could have gone even smaller than f/11. Razor-thin depth of field is not nearly as cool as I thought it would be before I got a macro lens, though of course I do appreciate the ability to have it if I need it.

The best part about all this was how I got to involve my kids in the whole thing. They helped me compose the shot, they looked at the rear LCD screen with me as we were figuring out exposure settings, and they got real excited when they saw the final shot too. The whole experience only took a matter of minutes (they had to get to school and I couldn’t spend all morning fiddling with my camera) but it was a unique little project and one that I’m glad we took the time to do.

I think I got my macro lens about a year ago. I’m not entirely sure, but I definitely had it for the previous Christmas season, which means I most likely purchased it around this time in 2021. In the subsequent time I have learned so much about taking close-up pictures, but also learned how very very little I know and have yet to understand. However, one of the most useful (dare I say important? I don’t know if it quite reaches that level…) lessons that repeatedly demonstrates itself to be true is that you really can find photo opportunities anywhere. You just have to look for them. Case in point: this old paint can.

My wife and I were working on a project out in the garage that involved some wood which needed to be painted white. We got out some old cans of paint that had been sitting in our cabinet for years, pried off the lids, and saw that while one of them was still perfectly good, the other had solidified into a white crusty mess. No worries though–that’s just one of those things that happens sometimes with old paint cans. It’s all good. And it’s even better when you can find a fun way to put said paint cans to use in another way, such as a photo opportunity. I thought the channel on the edge of the lid would make for an interesting subject, so when we were done painting I got my camera and tripod and set out to see what I could do.

I didn’t want to spend too much time with this setup since my kids wanted to go play in the yard, but I did take a few minutes to see if I could turn this paint can into something photo-worthy before chucking it in the trash. I used Live View to compose the shot, disabled Auto-ISO so I could get a nice clean image, put my camera on self-timer, and played around with several aperture settings while also rotating the can to get slightly different perspectives on the paint.

This was my favorite of the bunch, and while it’s not perfect there is an awful lot that I like about it. First of all I’m very happy with how the crusty paint-filled groove turned out, and I’m very pleased with how I was able to get just enough in focus (thanks to an f/27 aperture) while not blurring the rest of the shot too much that it eliminated any sense of context. I also like the black spots on the inside of the paint can, and the completely dark edge of the shot on the right. There’s even a subtle yellow glow on the lower-right thanks to a bit of sunlight creeping into the shot, though ultimately I’m not sure if that adds to the image or diminishes it a bit. Jury’s still out, I guess.

What I do know is that this was a really fun shot to take. I didn’t crop it and used almost no editing at all other than just some basic light/shadow adjustments in Lightroom. Basically, what you see here is pretty much exactly what came out of my camera, and it all served as a great reminder that if you can’t find any photo opportunities around you, you probably just aren’t looking hard enough :)

Each year for Homecoming, the groundskeepers put orange lights around Theta Pond almost as though they are prepping for Christmas. It’s all part of the celebration of what is, I have been told, one of the country’s greatest Homecoming celebration. While I haven’t had too much experience with other Homecomings (I don’t think I ever attended any such events or festivities when I was at UNL) I do know that the Oklahoma State University event is pretty awesome, and these orange lights are just one very small component of what is a really fun time around campus. They also happen to make for a really cool photography subject :)

I have shot these same orange lights a few times over the years, and until now I think my best images were ones that I took with the classic 50mm-plus-close-up-filters combination. While that worked to a certain extent, close-up filters don’t give you anywhere near the flexibility and photographic freedom of a true macro lens. When I saw these lights on a chilly Monday morning as I walked from my car to my office at the Library, I stopped to see if I could get a better shot than I had in past years. I positioned my camera, focused on one of the orange lights super close, and fired off a few frames.

And…nothing. Nada. The shots I got weren’t bad, but nothing about them was interesting or compelling to look at. They were technically solid but creatively bankrupt. The thing is, a single orange Christmas light just isn’t all that great as a photography subject. So I turned the idea on its head a bit: instead of taking a close-up shot of the lights, why not take a close-up shot of something else with the lights augmenting the image? That night I dug out this LEGO Dumbledore figuring from my kids’ toybox and returned the next morning to see if he could help me punch up the picture.

Spoiler: he sure did 😄

I positioned him at a bit of an angle, focused on his eye, set my aperture to f/4 and a minimum shutter speed of 1/125 (yay for Auto-ISO!), and took some pictures. The result was a far more interesting image than similar ones I have created before. It looks like something is actually happening, and the lights behind him give the scene a sense of kinetic energy and, perhaps, a bit of mysticism that is way cooler to look at than just orange lights on their own. Thanks Dumbledore for the help, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes more appearances in my pictures in the future…

One thing I have really enjoyed about doing Weekly Fifty for so many years is that it gives me the opportunity to look back at images that I took a long time ago, and think about similar compositions with my current level of knowledge, experience, and camera gear. Not re-imagine or re-interpret or re-mix, but re-visit and then look for ways to capture a similar mood, scene, or subject now compared to back then. (Whenever “back then” happened to be—sometimes a few months, sometimes many years.) Case in point: this picture I posted in August 2013, along with an extraordinarily short bit of text but my usual 2-3 minutes of audio commentary. Unlike some of my other early pictures I am still quite pleased with that image, though I think I would have made some different editing choices if I shot it now, particularly with regard to exposure levels and white balance. That image of those seed pods on the ground has always stuck with me, and I had that shot in mind when I came across a similar tree recently in early October.

To be clear: I did not set out to recreate the original shot from August 2013 when I saw this red and orange seed pod dangling from a tree branch by Theta Pond on the OSU campus. However, I did have certain elements of the first picture in my head to use as somewhat of an inspiration. Basically, these seed pods have worked before as really great photo subjects, so why not do it again? Except this time around I was armed with a macro lens, a much better understanding of light, exposure, and composition, and a much more colorful subject too.

I started by just taking a few shots of this seed pod front-and-center, but they just weren’t very interesting to look at. A red and orange oval in the middle of the frame with no context didn’t make for a compelling photograph, to be sure. Over the course of a few minutes I adjusted the aperture to control depth of field, altered my distance to the subject, and changed my point of view such that you could see not only the seed pod but the thin branch on which it was dangling. The result, as you see it here, is a far more complete composition and one that almost goes so far as to tell a story: changing seasons, stubborn determination, and perhaps even solitude. Though that last one might be a bit of a stretch, but I suppose it’s up to the viewer to decide.

There’s also one side note about this image that I think is kind of cool. I edited the colors a bit in Lightroom to increase saturation and adjust white balance, but I did not crop this at all. It’s not that I don’t take advantage of the freedom offered by cropping–quite the opposite, in fact–but it’s also really fun to push myself to try to get great shots without the need for cropping at all. Just to see if I can, and see what kinds of results are possible :)

There’s a nugget of greatness in this picture, but it’s hampered by a few things and in the end when I look at this I think of it more as a learning experience than a picture I’m really happy with. (Or, to put it in correct grammatical parlance, a picture with which I’m really happy. But that just sounds weird to write and even weirder to say out loud.) And I know I sound like an old man yelling at a cloud, but this picture is also a good illustration, at least to me anyway, of why mobile phone cameras still aren’t as good as their DSLR and mirrorless counterparts. First, some backstory.

I shot this at Lake Fort Gibson, where some college friends and I spent a weekend in early October. We have kept in touch over the years and helped each other through a lot of life changes, and six months ago we started tossing around the idea of getting together somewhere just to hang out in person like back in the day. So we did :) We found a cabin, planned the grocery list, collaborated on logistics and travel arrangements, and finally met up to hang out and catch up on things. One of my friends and I took out the canoe on Saturday just to check out the lake, and we decided to get up early Sunday morning to watch the sunrise from the water. Which, of course, meant some good photo opportunities as well.

Here’s the big question I faced, though, which ended up being more consequential than I predicted: what camera should I take for the sunrise canoe ride? I brought my D750 + 105mm macro lens along with my Fuji X100F out to the cabin, and of course my humble little iPhone SE (2020) as well. I ended up just going with my iPhone out in the canoe for one simple reason: it’s water-resistant, and I knew that things were likely to get wet. So at 7am on a chilly Sunday morning, my buddy and I set out in the canoe to see the sunrise and all I had with me was my iPhone.

And in one sense, that was fine. But in another sense, I wish I had brought my Fuji.

As you can clearly see, this picture obviously does not have the sun in it. But you can tell, hopefully, that it showcases the sunrise at a lake. I took this while my friend and I were paddling out to the main portion of the lake, and I really liked this tree silhouetted against the rich, deep colors of the slowly-lightening sky in the background. I also took several shots once we made it out to the lake proper and watched the sun emerge on the horizon, but they weren’t as compelling as this one. Despite not actually showing the sun, this image with a clear subject set against a compelling background was much more interesting to me than the receding horizon with the sun shining bright as it crested the shoreline way in the distance.

So everything’s great, right? I mean, on one hand sure. It’s a fine picture. But it does not hold up under scrutiny, unfortunately. The sky has awful compression artifacts and the gradient looks like something out of a 1990’s-era CD-ROM game. The yellow is not nearly as rich and deep as it was in person, and the trees suffer from an awful lack of overall sharpness. In short, it looks like a mobile phone picture. Had I taken the Fuji and shot in RAW all those issues would have been essentially nonexistent, but then, what if I had dropped the Fuji in the bottom of the canoe or otherwise gotten it exposed to water? Pfft–no more Fuji.

In the end I think this was an acceptable compromise, but it does make me think about the shot that could have been. However, what’s more important to me than this picture is the story behind it: a weekend with the guys talking about life and sharing stories, capped off with a canoe ride at the break of dawn. And that, as longtime Weekly Fifty readers will recall, is all that really matters.