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

I like the stark colors on this fire plug, and the blue accents really stood out to me as I was walking past.

I took this photo for a contest at Oklahoma State University, with the theme of “Capturing Student Life.” Not sure if it will win or not, but even if it doesn’t I am fairly please with the results. This dude was kind enough to let me take his picture while doing a kickflip on his board, but was quick to apologize for what was apparently the poor execution of his maneuver. I thanked him and assured him that it was far, far better than anything I could hope to do on a skateboard.

When I went to submit the photo for the contest, I was told that doing tricks on campus is illegal. Thankfully nobody told this dude :)

I’m not sure what kind of tree this is, but it likes to put on a show for the neighborhood this time of year.

 

I walk past this statue on the way to my building at work, and finally stopped to take a picture when it was all nice and lit up from the right side.  This was more of an exercise in Photoshop than photography, but I’m fairly happy with how it turned out so I thought I’d share it nonetheless.  This also demonstrates the value of shooting in RAW, and for the sake of comparison you can view a small JPG version of the original image here.  The statue is somewhat overexposed on the original, but since a ton of data is still available to work with on overexposed RAW images, this wasn’t really a problem (DPS explains this phenomenon in their article about exposing to the right). Basically, for the final image I isolated various parts of the image using different layers, and applied some correcting to each one in order to get the final picture the way I wanted it. I also fixed up a few blemishes in the bricks, using Photoshop’s ever-so-useful Clone Stamp tool.  If I were to do the same alterations from a JPG source image, it would be impossible to get the same amount of detail in the final image, which is RAW can be so useful. For example, in the original image the knee portion of the statue is nearly white.  If I had shot this in JPG, all I could do would be to make the knee look a little less bright. But since it was a RAW image, there was a ton of data collected by the camera that I was able to pull out in Photoshop.

 

The 50mm lens is great at many things, but wildlife photography is not one of them*. Still, there can be times when it can capture a nice shot if you’ve got your eyes open and your camera handy. The other day we were in my backyard and this little fellow was scampering across the fence, just a few feet from my camera. I think he was trying to make a clean getaway with a berry from one of our bushes, but looks like I caught him in the act.

 *unless you happen to be in a zoo, where you can get right up close and personal with said wildlife because they’re stuck in a cage. Or if your wildlife consists of something like a turtle that can’t exactly scamper off quickly when you approach. But if you’re going on a safari, better leave that 50mm lens at home.

Each year in February we chop these giant tufts of grass in our yard down after they turn brown, and each year we get the distinct irrational impression that they’re gone for good. I received confirmation this week that we were, yet again, pleasantly mistaken.

 

A pair of boots outside the Conoco Philips Alumni Center on the Oklahoma State University campus. I  wish I could have adjusted my perspective a bit and got the bricks on the right to be uniformly horizontal, but such is life. I may go back and re-shoot it sometime, but for now I’m relatively satisfied.

A 30-second exposure of a crepe myrtle in our back yard, ISO 100.  I was experimenting with different long exposures this morning, and in the end I’m not particularly happy with how this turned out since the long exposure adds virtually nothing to the photograph. Might as well have just taken it in regular daylight. Still, it was fun to try out a few things and play with my new tripod ball head a bit too.

A mockingbird resting outside the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

 

Skyline in Kansas.