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

Each year in June or July you’re likely to see a picture like this here on Weekly Fifty. It’s usually some kind of sunset or nature photo, and it’s always taken at Acorn’s Resort in Milford, Kansas where my family has gone for vacation for the past ten years. Every year I try to find either a new type of picture to take, or a new way of taking a familiar type of image, and the latter was certainly the case this time. I brought a slew of camera gear with me but since most of our time was spent visiting with family, most of my pictures are relatives: siblings, parents, nieces, and nephews. There was one evening when my brother’s wife tipped me off about the sunset, so I decided it was worth a quick break from talking around a bowl of chips and queso. And she was right: this one was awesome.

I grabbed my tripod, Nikon D750, 50mm lens, and 10-stop ND filter and ran out behind the cabin several of our families were all sharing together. The sun was rapidly setting so I didn’t have much time to try various locations and vantage points, so I just decided to set up my camera in one single spot and see what I could get. I chose a location just up the hill between the cabin and the shoreline, switched to manual focus, metered the scene, screwed on the ND filter, and took a 30-second exposure. I liked what I got but I adjusted the view just a bit, took another exposure, and repeated that process just a couple more times before the sun went down over the horizon.

I’ve taken a lot of sunset shots over the years, but this just might be one of my favorites. I like virtually everything about this image: The brilliant colors, the rays bursting outwards from the sun, the lens flare on the right, the still surface of the water, the sharp treeline…you get the point. Everything about this image just worked, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity, the gear, and the photographic knowledge to make this shot. This image is not possible with a mobile phone for several reasons:

• Mobile phones have a static aperture, which means you cannot get sunbursts like what you see here.
• Mobile phones do not have the ability to shoot with ND filters, though there are some third-party companies that make clip-on options. These are nowhere near the quality of a proper screw-on ND filter like what you can put on a dedicated camera lens.
• The field of view on most mobile phones is between 25-30 degrees, which means the sun in this image would be much smaller and the scene would not have the same sense of warmth and personality.

I’m not disparaging mobile phones here, I’m just saying that as great as they are in 2021 they still have some important limitations. And sometimes it helps to get a dedicated camera and spend some time learning how to use it to get the shots you want :)

Would you believe me if I told you this picture was taken in Oklahoma? I don’t think I would believe you if you told me, and yet, that’s exactly where I shot this. I stood near the southwestern edge of Mount Scott, situated at the east end of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton, Oklahoma, and took this picture with my Fuji X100F while my wife and kids climbed around on some nearby rocks behind me. This was the third of four visits to Mount Scott during our recent trip and I was glad I could capture a small sliver of what the magnificent view looks like from this spot high above the plains. The previous evening my wife and I both noted that as the sun was setting, the hills surrounding the mountain came alive with brilliant contrast, as the western side was bathed in light while the eastern side of every hill below was shrouded in shadow. During most of the day the view looks quite different as the surrounding scenery is evenly lit, but as the sun descends on the horizon everything is transformed and it really was majestic to behold.

To get this shot I used a tripod, a small f/8 aperture, a low ISO of 200, and a 1/60 second shutter speed. The 35mm (equivalent) field of view here is maybe a bit too tight to capture the grandeur of this scene, but it was what I had to work with so I tried to make the most of it. I also wanted to get something interesting in the foreground, hence the rocks and trees you see here. I tried a couple different locations for this shot but didn’t have a lot of time since the sun was going down and I didn’t want to leave my family for the whole evening while I fiddled with the camera. In the end I quite like how this turned out, and while the low-lying clouds obscure the blue sky just a bit I don’t really mind since it adds a bit of color and contrast to the image overall. And this gives me something to think about, and new ideas to try, the next time we return to this area. Which, hopefully, will be soon.

One of the first posts I ever put up on Weekly Fifty was a shot (well, two shots) of a prairie dog from the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton, OK. Those images were pretty neat for the time, especially considering how little I understood about photography as well as my gear: a humble Nikon D200 and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. I still have that lens and use it regularly, but have since replaced the D200 with other much more capable cameras, and have learned way more about photography as well. As such, it was fun to revisit that scene eight years later for the shot you see above. I took this picture of a prairie dog poking up between two rows of purple flowers at the same location as the original shots from 2013, but this time I was thinking about more than just the subject. I considered the whole frame: foreground, background, subject, angle of view, and of course the fundamentals like aperture, shutter, and ISO. The result is a much more interesting image but also one that could not have happened without first taking the original.

To get this shot I used my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and my goodness it sure would have been nice to have a mirrorless camera with a flip-out screen! I had to get low to the ground for this shot which was difficult not just because of the fire ants, but because the optical viewfinder on a DSLR is so much better than using the LCD screen. I realized it was nearly impossible to shoot pictures of these fast-moving creatures using the slow, sluggish contrast-detect autofocus on the LCD screen which meant I had to use the optical viewfinder instead. And while that is normally just fine with me, it’s not so great when you have to basically lie in a prone position on hot gravel while getting bitten up by ants. I opted instead to crouch at a weird angle to get this shot instead of lying down, and while I think the end result is OK it did make me long for a Z6II :)

This was a fun one to shoot though, partly because these little prairie dogs are so darn cute but also because my kids were so excited to see them. It was basically a solid 15 minutes of “Hey Daddy, look over there!” and “Mommy, I see another one!” When I look at this picture I of course see an animal in its natural habitat but it’s those memories of spending time with my family that come flooding back to me, and are the real reason I enjoy pictures like this so much.

Way back in 2013 my wife and I took a weekend trip to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton, Oklahoma, and it seemed like we stepped into some kind of warp in the fabric of spacetime. Oklahoma isn’t exactly known for its soaring peaks and grand scenic vistas, and yet, just two hours from our home is this beautiful, expansive, majestic spot tucked away behind an army base just waiting to be discovered. We visited again a few years later and this spring as we were eager to get out with our kids after a rather…different…school year we once again turned our attention to the Wichita Mountains.

The first spot we went was Jed Johnson Tower, an old fire watch tower that sits near a lake which bears the same name. We spent a few hours just hiking around, looking at scenery, and of course taking lots of photos. Unfortunately the tower is sealed off and visitors cannot enter, but it still makes for an amazing sight and the kind of thing you just don’t come across very often in Oklahoma. To get this shot I used my Nikon D500 and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens set to f/2.8 at 140mm. I thought carefully about the composition: I could have just zoomed in on the tower, but without context it would have been dull and almost meaningless. I wanted the tower to be set against an interesting background, and shooting at 140mm gave me just the right composition with the mountains in the rear, the tower to draw the viewer’s eye, and plenty of foreground vegetation and natural elements (including that beautiful dead tree just off center) to make the image more interesting. Shooting at f/2.8 gave me just enough depth of field to separate the subject from the background, and on that particular lens you don’t really sacrifice sharpness even when shooting wide open.

This spot, and the entire Wichita Mountains area, is filled with beauty both natural and man-made, and it really is worth the drive if you live anywhere near.

‘Tis the season for magnolia flowers! I always like taking my camera out in May and June when these giant flowers are in full bloom around campus, especially at Theta pond. I’ve taken many shots of magnolias over the years but there’s always something special about seeing these gigantic bursts of color often tucked away beneath brilliant layers of unfolding white petals. I don’t recall seeing magnolia flowers before moving to Oklahoma but now that we live here, and have lived here for well over ten years, I still never grow tired of looking at them or taking their photograph.

Every year I try to see these flowers a little differently or look for a bit more creative way to showcase them in a picture, and for this shot I used a lesson I have been learning (albeit slowly) over the last several months. It helps to get closer, but not too close, and help your viewers see your subject not in isolation but framed against larger elements of the image. Especially a colorful background, if at all possible. That last part is a little tricky with magnolias because of the enormous white petals that surround the bright center, but it was that challenge which led me to take the shot you see here.

I used my D750 and 50mm lens, natch, but augmented it with a +4 closer-up filter and a somewhat smaller aperture of f/4.8. Sharpness is a good thing, especially when shooting up close, and too often I have made the mistake of sacrificing extreme closeness with subject sharpness. I’m learning to dial it back a bit and quite like the results which you can see here: nearly the entire center portion of the flower is in focus while the petals in the foreground and background are not, and the points of light far in the background are brilliantly rendered heptagons that give a nice sense of context to the image. It took several attempts to get this shot but I’m very pleased with the result, and I hope I can snag a few more magnolia images before the season is over.