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

If this picture brings you a bit of déjà vu, you might be on to something. The view from the top of Mount Scott in the Wichita Mountains is one of the most incredible sights in Oklahoma, and is part of what makes this location one of my family’s favorite places to spend a weekend. It’s not always easy to get a specific picture that you have in mind though, and over the years I’ve realized that the way for me to get the most fulfilling (even if they’re not the most technically impressive) photos is to just kind of go with the flow. We’ve gone to Mount Scott in all sorts of weather conditions, and things rarely line up with the photos I want to capture or the gear I happen to have with me. So, the most recent time we visited the area the only camera I brought with me was my trusty little image-creating powerhouse–the Fuji X100F. And it worked great.

After a day of hiking on the Charon’s Garden trail we brought things to a close by driving up Mount Scott to watch the sun lay itself to rest under a blanket of clouds in the brilliant sapphire western sky. Well, that was the plan anyway. Like I said, with this place (as with most mountains) you never know what you’re gonna get. And as it turned out, the mountain cooperated. As the kids climbed on rocks and the sun slowly crept lower and lower, there came a point just after it settled below the horizon when the entire sky was lit up with a bright blue and orange glow with streaks of clouds crossing from left to right like the broad strokes of a master’s brush. I snatched my Fuji from my side, held it to my eye, and popped off a couple of frames to see if I could capture the faintest glimmer of what it was actually like to be seeing the sunset in person.

Then I remembered my fundamentals: aperture, shutter, and ISO. If I wanted a good shot I had to shoot in RAW, which I usually don’t do on the Fuji since the JPEGs hold up just fine on their own, thank you very much. But when shooting vast landscapes like this it helps to have a little extra leeway in editing, especially when pulling data from the shadows like I knew I would need to do here. I dialed in an aperture of f/5.6 to get the scene pretty well in focus with minimal depth of field while also getting enough light to keep the ISO low since I was shooting handheld and needed a fast shutter. I used Auto ISO with a minimum shutter of 1/125 which left me with ISO 640–perfectly acceptable for a 2018-era APS-C sensor, especially since I was shooting RAW, though of course lower is always better. It’s all about tradeoffs though, and that was one I was happy to make.

The resulting RAW file was pretty dark and, to be honest, uninspiring. But a little coaxing with gradient masks and other Lightroom adjustments got me to a result that is pretty close to what the real scene was actually like. I don’t know when we’ll get back to the area and, when we do, what kind of photos I’ll be able to take, but in the meantime this one serves as a great example of what you can get when everything just sort of works out.

I’m not sure I have the patience to be a wildlife photographer. I certainly don’t have the gear for it, and I don’t really know if I have the compositional eye for this kind of image-making pursuit either. That being said, it is fun to take pictures of our animal counterparts with whom we share the planet every now and again. Most of the time when I end up taking photos of animals, like the squirrel you see here, it’s basically an accident, or perhaps seen from a more positive angle, serendipity. In this case I was walking around Theta Pond on the OSU campus with my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens (hardly a good combination for wildlife photos, though an outstanding setup for lots of other kinds of pictures) and just kind of paused in my tracks when I came face-to-face with this fleet-footed furry friend.

Unlike some of the other photos featured here on Weekly Fifty in recent weeks, this one involved virtually no planning whatesoever; it all happened within the span of four or five seconds, and I consider myself lucky to have gotten anything at all as a result. The moment I saw this squirrel I immediately raised my camera to my eye, having already set a few parameters like Auto-ISO with minimum shutter of 1/250 as well as a somewhat small aperture of f/8, and took a couple of shots. I didn’t have time to consider much of anything beyond just trying to focus on its eye and, if I remember correctly, I think my focus point was in the middle already and all I did was just adjust the direction of my camera in a split second in order move the focus point manually and just crop the image later. It also helped that this particular day was quite overcast, which lent a nice even light to the whole scene–at 2pm, which is when this image was captured, the sun was behind the squirrel but obscured by cloud cover, or else the backlighting would have rendered the shot a lot more challenging.

Every now and then I’ll bring my D500 and 70-200mm lens out to get pictures of small animals, but it’s just not something I really get much enjoyment from and most of the time I’m much more content to take creative, artistic photos with my macro lens or even the ol’ 50mm f/1.8G that I’ve had for more than a decade. So when a picture opportunity like this present itself and I’m able to try something a bit out of my comfort zone, it’s fun, interesting, exciting, and even a little exhilarating. I like it :)

Time-lapse video of this star trails photo: youtu.be/HRg8OHnSY1c

One of my favorite features of my GoPro camera is its ability to take star trails shots, like the one you see here, with relative ease. Despite its minuscule image sensor, especially compared to a full-frame DSLR or Mirrorless camera, it has a bevy of software features to help photographers get incredible images that are difficult, impractical, or even impossible to capture with a larger, more expensive, digital camera. I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself though; let’s back up a bit and talk about this week’s picture a bit, shall we?

I shot this on the outskirts of Medicine Park, Oklahoma, which sits nestled in a valley just outside one of our family’s favorite spots in the state: The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. We rented a cabin (or house, I guess, depending on your definition) with some friends and spent a few days down in the area hiking, exploring, and just hanging out together. I brought a couple cameras to take some photos and video clips of the weekend, and on two of our nights there I set my GoPro on a tripod just behind our rented residence, pointed it up at the sky, set it to Star Trails mode, and went back inside until morning. The first night’s photo wasn’t bad at all, but it had several elements that I was pretty sure I could improve on for the next night.

I thought this one did a decent job of capturing the spinning sky (or, rather, the spinning earth as evidenced by the rotating stars) but I wasn’t a huge fan of the greenery on the left side which was lit up from a bright light at the edge of the yard. I also didn’t like how the horizon was slanted upwards and to the right, which was partially due to the barrel distortion of the camera lens but also thanks to the slightly askance angle at which my tripod was sitting. Ultimately, I was really hoping for more celestial spots in the background and fewer terrestrial elements in the foreground.

The following night I set up my GoPro about twenty yards north of the same location, used a flashlight to sort of gauge where I was pointing it in relation to the tree on the left, set the Star Trails timer, and went back indoors. Instead of getting up the next morning to see how things went, I woke up to the sound of strong winds whipping the trees about 3am. Not wanting the camera to topple into the nearby pond, I grabbed my flashlight, ran outside in my slippers, snagged the tripod, set it just inside the door, and went back to bed. (In retrospect I don’t think there was anything to worry about, especially because the GoPro is waterproof, but I didn’t want to take any chances.)

The next morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything about the original star trails image had been addressed: the horizon was straight, the tree was less prominent, and the whole scene had a sense of scale and, dare I say it, majesty that was missing in the first one. I’ve taken a handful of photos like this since owning the GoPro and it never ceases to be incredibly fun and supremely satisfying to set up a shot in the evening, check on the results the next morning, and see something I am genuinely proud to have been able to capture.

So, do you remember how last week I went on and on about patience, planning, and forethought? Yeah, this image had none of that. Not that it’s a bad shot–far from it, I would say. I quite like it, and am really glad to have been able to take it. It’s just a bit, oh, ironic I suppose, that after all my rambling about taking time to consider so many photographic elements in advance last week that I would take a picture like this that employed none of that whatsoever. And yet, it still turned out great. Is there a lesson to be learned? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not, but at the end of the day it’s the results that count and if this photo is any indication, sometimes you it takes a lot of preparation to get a good image but sometimes all you need is a little energon, and a lot of luck. Or maybe just the latter.

After taking last week’s photo of the yellow leaf I turned toward my office and strolled down the path, but then I saw this little green leaf protruding from the hedges that line many of the sidewalks on the OSU campus. It was glistening from the previous day’s rain, and the sun was still low on the horizon such that the entire leaf looked like it was basically glowing in the early morning light. Even better, some of the lights on the Student Union were still turned on, which meant that I could get another composition (just like the one from last week) that is only possible in the early part of the day just after the break of dawn. I hoisted my camera to my eye, set an uncharacteristically large aperture of f/3.2, and fired off a couple shots.

The entire experience lasted less than a minute (I had to get to work on time, after all) but I suppose that’s somewhat à propos given how the whole thing came together–that is, pretty rapidly. What I like most about this shot is the huge balls of blurry bokeh just to either side of the leaf, as if framing the subject intentionally in between them. Which, I guess, was rather intentional given that I kind of intended for that to happen once I noticed the lights in the background. I also think it’s kind of cool that if you don’t know that this leaf is about two inches tall, you might be forgiven for mistaking it for a Christmas tree. Maybe that’s some kind of reminder that even though Christmas was a month ago, the spirit of the holiday can last all year round.

One of my favorite times to take photos is during, or perhaps slightly after, a warm rain. Another one of the best times to go out and capture the world with a camera is in the morning. And still yet one more fantastic time for photos is in the fall when the leaves are changing colors. So when these conditions come together, the results can be almost magical. Not actually magical, but pretty cool nonetheless. I was walking around Theta Pond at OSU on a recent rainy afternoon when I saw a tree that was lit up like an Independence Day firework–just an explosion of red amidst all the greens and yellows surrounding it, and the first thing I thought of was what it would look like in a picture. But not just any picture, mind you: a blob of red leaves doesn’t make for a very interesting image. What I had in mind was something else as the subject, with a mass of blurry leaves in the background behind it. As I looked at the tree while I was walking, I thought about coming back to the same location the following morning when the sun would be low on the horizon to get a shot that just isn’t possible later in the day.

So as I left for work extra early the next day I had my trusty D750 with 105mm macro lens in tow, and instead of going to the office I first made a stop at the tree by the pond. I had to walk around a bit and look at things from a few different angles, but eventually I settled on a single yellow leaf just to the west of the red tree as my primary subject, with the glowing amber leaves behind it as the sun shone through them.

I’m not sure how much distance was between the subject and the background, but I would guess around 15 feet–whatever the number, it was enough to create a really good sense of separation between the yellow leaves and its crimson counterparts. I took a few dozen photos at various apertures, all roughly similar to what you see here in terms of overall composition. This one ended up as my favorite for a couple of reasons. First, I liked the sharpness of the subject, and even though a few parts are out of focus most of it is on the same plane and if you click through to the high-resolution original on Flickr you’ll see an incredible degree of subtle detail that really shows just how delicate and finely-crafted it really is.

I also like the blurriness of the background–you might not even know it’s red leaves, but the bright balls of light shining through hopefully give some kind of clue. I also really enjoy the crisscrossing lines, which are really just small tree branches, as they lend a sense of dynamic energy to the shot that some other versions were missing.

This is one of those photos that reminds me of how much fun photography can be, especially if you put a bit of work into it. This image didn’t take more than a few minutes (I got to work on time) but it did require just a bit of forethought and planning that’s really fun when it turns out to work how you hope.