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

Over the years, one of my favorite subjects to shoot is the seed pod of a magnolia tree. Everything about them kind of fascinates me from a photographic perspective: in the spring they show up as huge white flowers for just a few days before withering and gently floating to the ground. As summer wears on, the central part of each flower balloons in size as the seeds inside it grow. And when the sun stops shining so brightly as autumn encroaches, the seeds inside each pod emerge like bright red jewels just waiting to get snatched up by birds or falling to the soil in the hopes of one day turning into trees of their own.

And through it all, at each stage of life, these seed pods are super fun to take pictures of. (Apologies for ending the sentence with a preposition; sometimes it’s just easier that way.) Even at the end of their life cycle they have such rich colors and textures that it’s hard to not take a bad picture, and when everything lines up just right it’s really something else. I’m not saying that this picture is among the best I’ve ever taken, but that it’s just a fun example of how these seed pods are so enjoyable and gratifying to capture with a camera. Anywho, what you’ve got here is a magnolia seed pod (obviously) with a few elements that elevate it beyond the mundane. First, the light streaming through a sea of big green leaves in the background gives the whole scene a sense of kinetic energy—though perhaps that’s also due to the incredible wind whipping through the tree as I shot this photo. I used auto ISO with a minimum shutter speed of 1/250 to eliminate motion blur from the subject, not the lens, and even then I had to hold the branch in the foreground with my left hand as I took the picture with my right hand.

One-upping the background light, though, is the backlight on the subject. I specifically sought out an angle from which to shoot the photo that resulted in a bright glow, almost like a halo, around the edge of the seed pod. This backlight, or more accurately, rim light, makes the dull browns spring to life and almost pop out of the frame. I also used a mid-sized aperture of f/6.7 to get a depth of field that was shallow but not too shallow.

All that would be enough for an interesting picture, but there was one other element I was able to use to my advantage which, in my opinion, elevates the shot well beyond many others I have taken: the horizontal branch in the foreground. This was quite intentional on my part, and I am so pleased with how the final composition turned out as a result of this added bit of dimensionality. The image goes beyond my usual single-subject-blurry-background style, and instead contains a sense of depth and presence would otherwise simply not be present. It almost feels like the viewer is peeking into a hidden world, peering through the tree branches as if to gaze upon this seed pod in its final act before succumbing to the forces of nature.

So basically, this was a really fun image to take and makes me excited for what I might be able to capture next time I’m in a similar position :)

Huge shout-out to my brother Phil for making this photo possible. When I was a kid my siblings and I used to watch the movie Jurassic Park constantly, and to this day we find ourselves quoting from various scenes in all manner of casual conversations. And so, when Phil was out shopping recently and stumbled across a LEGO set depicting the scene where Dennis Nedry gets attacked by a dilophosaurus, he picked up not one but three: one for himself, one for me, and another for our brother Tom. (Andy and Joanne didn’t like the movie as much as we did.) It took about a half hour for me to put the set together while my kids were playing Mario Kart and my wife was out with a friend, and after it was done the only thing left was to figure out how to photograph it :)

I had a rough idea in mind that ended up fairly close to what you see here, but my first attempt was way off the mark. I knew I wanted the primary subject to be Nedry, but also have the dinosaur, Jeep, sign, and even the Barbasol can visible as well. (It’s a super detailed LEGO set!) I also knew the key to the whole scene would be placement as well as lighting, and it wasn’t something I wanted to approach lightly. I tried a quick test on our dining room table and the results were…not great.

I mean, where to even start? There’s no clear subject, the frame is too jam-packed with stuff, the Jeep looms large and doesn’t even fit in the shot, the arrow is pointing off the side of the picture, and the lighting is horrendous. It’s dark, dull, and uninteresting. Clearly I needed a bit more time, and a little better lighting, and some more space to really create a compelling scene. I don’t meant to be overly critical here, but I knew I could do better than this. So, a few days later I set up the following scene:

The two most important things to consider for composing the image were the position of each LEGO, and the lighting. I put Nedry close to the camera because I wanted him to be the primary focus of the viewer’s attention. Then I put the dinosaur behind and to the right, which makes it seem like it’s pretty close to Nedry even though it’s actually not. I had to do this because of the size of each figure: The dinosaur is much taller and larger than Nedry, and it just didn’t look right when they were positioned close to each other. I put the flora/dock/barbasol set between the two figures but much farther back, and deliberately placed it so that you could see the East Dock sign (though the wording isn’t perhaps as clear as it could be, if you know the scene from the movie, you know what’s going on.) Way in the back went the Jeep because, while it’s an important element of the scene in the movie, I didn’t want it to detract from the focus of the main elements of this image–Nedry and the ill-tempered dinosaur. Instead I wanted the Jeep to serve as a bit of added texture and scenery and in that regard I think it worked well. Finally, the last thing I wanted to include was some kind of flora to make it seem a bit like the Costa Rican jungle of the film and for that the solution was remarkably simple: a couple of fake houseplants we just happened to have sitting around as decorations.

As for the lighting, there’s a couple of things to note. First, the two white lights (one lying flat on the table and the other standing up just past the left edge of the frame) were dialed in to a color temperature that mimicked the light that might come from the moon or overhead security lights. I put a red light on the dilophosaurus to give it a sinister, imposing feel and two lights way in the back set to 2700K just to add a bit of subtle color to the background. I specifically placed the vertical white light so it added a bit of rim lighting to Nedry and the dinosaur, which also helped separate them from the rest of the scene and give the composition a more three-dimensional look.

Overall I’m extremely pleased with how this all turned out, and particularly grateful to Phil for buying the LEGO set for me. Thanks Phil! This was a fun project from start to finish, and I’m really happy with the final photograph.

Earlier this year a friend from work visited Scotland with her family, and brought back a handful of miniature Loch Ness Monsters made of glass that she purchased from a local vendor after spending time near the well-known lake just south of Inverness. About an inch and a half long, each of the miniatures contained a striking amount of detail, from subtle swirls of color to a tiny indentation for the eye. As I held the one she gave me in my hand, I immediately had an idea of how to capture an image of it with my camera. Way back in 2015 I took this picture of a little wooden toy train that that my son got for a birthday present. I used my Nikon D200, a 50mm lens, a tripod, and some crumpled-up aluminum foil. That’s it. It wasn’t fancy but the results were pretty cool, and over the years I have revisited that general compositional idea here and there to take similar pictures of other small objects.

I wanted to do the same thing with this tiny little Loch Ness Monster, so later that day I used a scene not too dissimilar from the one that I used to create the original image of the loon. First, I crumpled some aluminum foil and set it on the table and carefully set the little Nessie among some wrinkles. I then put my D750 on a tripod with 105mm f/2.8 macro lens replacing the old Nifty Fifty, pointed it at the figure, and focused. Finally I got out several of my Pavotubes and placed them around the set, including one that I held in my hand to get just the right reflection on Nessie’s head while the exposure was being created. If you look below you can just barely see the glass figure in front of my lens, and everything else is more or less exactly as it was when I took this week’s photo.

I took a few photos and was mostly pleased with the result, but something didn’t look quite right. It was a fine picture of the glass monster, but it didn’t have the right feeling, or emotion, that I was hoping to capture. Something was missing. Then it hit me: the loch ness monster lives in a lake, right? The essential element I had neglected to add was just that: water!

I poured a bit of water onto the foil, and that gave the scene exactly what it needed. My son, upon seeing the final shot, said “Dad, it looks like it’s actually swimming through the water.” I was really hoping to capture that feeling, and when I heard his reaction it felt pretty good–as if I had done what I set out to do. This was an extraordinarily fun picture to take, and who knows…one day maybe I’ll be able to visit Loch Ness with my family for real and maybe even take a picture of the actual monster swimming at sunset.

Or maybe not ;)

If there’s one theme that has been present throughout many of my images this year, it’s that of building on previous works to create something new based on what I have learned. Over the years, and particularly 2024, I have found myself revisiting familiar concepts, compositions, and themes from earlier in my photography journey and this image of a fiery skipper butterfly resting on top of a flower to take a drink of nectar represents yet another illustration of my own growth and change.

Over a decade ago I took a picture of the same animal resting on a similar flower, in almost the exact same location as this week’s image. I shot it on my Nikon D200 with a 50mm lens–the same gear that I used to launch Weekly Fifty a few months prior. It was one of those initial images that helped me see the possibilities afforded by learning to control my camera so I could get the kind of photograph I would have never before thought possible. Basically the photography version of Tom Hanks making fire. As the years went by I built on that original with lots of other similar shots, not in pursuit of picture perfection but always striving to simply learn, grow, and improve. Sometimes it meant newer, better gear such as moving from APS-C to Full-Frame or upgrading to a high-quality macro lens instead of relying on somewhat crude (but nonetheless quite effective) close-up filters, but mostly my improvements have been due to studying the nature of photography–lighting, exposure, colors, highlights, shadows, angles, and so on.

That brings me to this week’s featured photo–not the culmination of everything that has come before, but an example of what it means to build on what has worked and learn from experience. It’s a simple image, easy to understand with a clear subject and blurry background, but that simplicity is the result of years of practice, refinement, and also a bit of good luck. The first thing to note is that the photo is basically monochromatic, consisting almost entirely of purple and yellow. (Magenta and goldenrod? Amethyst and saffron? To me, it’s just purple and yellow.) This is somewhat unique compared to similar shots I have taken, most of which have at least some greens in them for good measure. In fact, the image below was taken in the same spot about one minute earlier. It’s remarkably similar in many ways, but the tri-color scheme changes so much about the composition and how it’s seen and interpreted by the viewer.

Limiting the pallet of this week’s photo to two instead of three was a completely intentional compositional choice I made, and one that wouldn’t have even occurred to me in years past. There’s also the issue of perspective–that is, the position of the camera relative to the fiery skipper butterfly. In the image above, which is similar to many I have taken over the years, you see a profile shot of the subject. It’s fine, but it’s also not all that interesting. In the featured image for today the butterfly is angled and looking right at the camera almost as if to say hello there, and inviting you, the viewer, to join it for a short snack.

I hope to continue taking photos like this, and maybe get some shots of monarchs and other butterflies, not just now but in years to come, and not just learning but also having a lot of fun at the same time :)

If you look at this week’s image and do a bit of a double-take, thinking that you have already seen this picture before, you would not be too far off. In a lot of ways this picture is kind of a carbon-copy of the same shot I put up last week which was, in and of itself, an echo of the image from the previous week. It’s all part of the process though, and at the end of the day what matters to me is that I’m learning, growing, and enjoying the process. There’s also an element of self-reflection involved, and in looking at this picture I can see some things that are inspired by previous shots but others that I could have done differently to make a more compelling composition. That’s not meant as a criticism, but simply an example of self-awareness and a desire to improve.

Take, for example, the background. Specifically, the background just behind the flower on the right. It’s blurry, contrasts with the color of the subject, and serves to enhance the image overall. However, there’s also the matter of the green vertical flower stem cutting through the frame just above the bright orange and yellow flower. It’s not great, and the kind of thing I would normally make sure to look for upon taking the image and, upon seeing it, take steps to rectify such as repositioning myself or looking for another spot in the garden from which to compose a similar shot. But like the dwarves of middle earth, delving too greedily and too deep, I didn’t think beyond the immediate gratification of taking a cool photo. As such the final image is fine, but not great, and I’m perfectly OK with that since I still feel like I learned something.

The same goes for the purple flowers poking up right at the base of the same green stem, almost like a pop-up ad on the internet trying to get your attention. I could have cropped the image a bit, or even used the healing tool in Lightroom to just remove it, but instead I just left it as-is to serve as a reminder for me to take my time and compose my shots a little more carefully next time.

If all this sounds like I’m being a bit harsh on myself that’s really not my intention. It’s an effort to examine what worked well (most of the shot) and learn from what didn’t (green stem; purple flower) and try to do just a bit better next time. I’m sure I will, and I’m excited to see the results :)