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

I don’t often do topical posts here on Weekly Fifty, mostly because I would rather just take photos and not worry about pairing them to specific times of the year but also because sometimes I just can’t think of any good pictures that go with certain occasions. Or if I do, I just don’t feel like forcing my photography to bend to temporal constraints. However, this year I wanted to do just that and I had a specific idea in mind, if not a specific image. And it’s all thanks to (what else?) my Macro lens. My goodness I sure am having fun with this :)

Before we put up our Christmas tree I had a picture like this in mind–that of an ornament hanging from a branch with some lights in the background–and while I can’t say I had this exact image in my head as my wife and I were stringing lights and hanging ornaments with my kids and my parents (who had the good fortune of being able to visit us over Thanksgiving this year) I certainly did have photography on my mind. Of course my dad and I shot dozens (hundreds?) of images of all of us doing the decorating, but the whole time I just kept on thinking about getting up close with my macro lens and composing a shot like this. A few days later after my parents had gone and the dust had settled, I set out to get the photo you see here.

I didn’t want this to be just any ornament. I wanted a picture with a bit of history, meaning, and significance behind it, which is something I am learning at which this Macro lens excels. I still have a box of Christmas ornaments from when I was a kid, so my wife and I looked around a bit until we found this one that would work well as a close-up picture but also had a name and date attached to it. The underside of this little scene has “Simon 1988” written on it, and while I don’t recall the exact circumstances under which I came into possession of this plastic bear, tree, and unicorn atop a small drum, I’m guessing it was from my grandparents who were fond of giving us grandkids an ornament each year. (Mom, if you’re reading this…do you remember the story behind the ornament?) I like how the scene shows signs of wear: scratches and marks on the bear’s face, yellowed glue around where the figures are attached to the drum, and some discoloring on the horse as well. I suppose that’s what happens when you keep around a Christmas ornament for over 30 years :)

A bit about the image itself: My initial instinct was to shoot wide open because more bokeh = better photo, right? Well, not exactly. Wide open at f/3.5 resulted in the blurry mess you can see below.

While the bear looks kind of interesting, the composition as a whole is far less compelling than the one at the top of this post. I realized that by stopping down to f/13 I could get a much more interesting image: red highlights on the tree behind the rocking horse, better definition on the bear, a more interesting background, and my favorite, starburst lines coming out of the red light.

And with that, I’m closing out 2021 with a wish and a prayer for health, happiness, and blessings for all of you. What a year it has been, and I hope 2022 brings much-needed long-term respite from the pandemic. I hope you all, dear readers, got your COVID vaccine and your loved ones are safe and healthy, and may God pour out His blessings on you now and throughout the new year. Thanks for being part of Weekly Fifty and here’s to a bright and beautiful 2022 just around the corner.

As far back as I can remember, I have enjoyed shooting photos on rainy days. Something about the overcast lighting, the rain falling, and the subdued feeling of just being outside in those conditions elevates the art of photography for me, and I find that I enjoy the act of taking photos in the rain even if the end result doesn’t even work out. But when I do come back from taking photos on a dreary day with something that looks good enough to put up on Weekly Fifty…well, that’s a good day in my book.

This picture kind of reminds me of one that I took years ago with my 50mm lens and close-up filters, and it was these early shots that taught me so much about doing close-up photography–enough that I feel like I’m not entirely starting from scratch with my new 105mm macro lens. It’s not just about finding an interesting subject (in this case, a drop of water on a leaf) but looking at the light, the foreground, the background, the colors, the depth of field, and everything else that goes into making an interesting photograph. On this picture I intentionally composed things so that the droplet would be somewhat backlit, as I wanted to get a glistening shine on the top edge. I also wanted a bit of foreground blur and tried to get the subject as sharp as possible, though that is almost always more difficult than it seems since water droplets don’t play nicely with a camera’s autofocus system.

To get this image I knelt low to the ground, got close to the leaf, adjusted the aperture, and fired off a few shots. I wasn’t happy with the results, so I adjusted the aperture some more, repeated the process…and nothing. The pictures just weren’t that great, and I couldn’t figure out why. Turns out that what I thought was a small aperture (f/8, f/13) was way too large when photographing tiny water droplets up close. I ended up shooting this at f/19, 1/90 second (thanks to the Vibration Reduction on this lens), ISO 100, and even at f/19 the depth of field is still razor thin. It’s like I’m having to re-learn everything I know about taking pictures as I use this Macro lens, and it’s awesome. I’m super happy with how this shot turned out and can’t wait to keep shooting it to find out what else it can do.

One thing I have found myself doing with my new Macro lens is returning to shots I took years ago, and reimagining them now that I have better gear for the job. Or, in this case, maybe just copying and pasting :) Way back in August of 2013 I posted this shot of a moth sitting on a flower that I took in the OSU Formal Gardens with my 50mm lens. It was, and still is, a good picture (IMHO) and I am pleased with the colors, the light, and the clarity with which my humble little Nikon D200 was able to capture the subject. It was also a good learning experience for me, and that one image taught me a lot about capturing insects in the form of digital images. So when I got this 105mm Macro lens I wanted to take it out for a spin, photographically speaking, and see if how it would handle that same type of composition.

Spoiler alert: It was amazing.

One of my favorite things about this lens is how there’s no limit to what you can focus on–at least not in a practical sense. It works on things that are super close, super far, and everything in between. When using close-up filters you are generally limited only to subjects that are…well, close-up. You can’t screw on a +4 filter and shoot a picture of something that’s far away. But with a macro lens, you have all the focusing freedom you need. The 105mm focal length lets me get close to insects like this one while remaining a little farther away so as not to scare them. So when I saw this moth drinking nectar from the same patch of flowers as the original image way back in 2013, I was eager to see what kind of a picture I could get.

I followed this moth for a minute or two, adjusting my vantage point and snapping photos as it went from flower to flower while holding my finger down on the back button AE-L/AF-L button and adjusting the aperture from f/8 to f/13 and back just to see how it would work. This picture was my favorite of the bunch and required very little editing, and even at f/8 you can see how incredibly shallow the depth of field is. I like the bit of flower on the left which is obscuring the wings, as it adds a bit of three-dimensionality to the image and makes it seem like I am peeking in on a hidden world.

Anyone who has spent time up north is surely familiar with the call of the loon: the sound that signifies summer sunsets, evening campfires, and time spent with friends and family by the lake. I grew up in Minnesota and also lived there for five years as an adult, and all it takes is one high-pitched warble to immediately transport me a thousand miles to the north woods at dusk. I took this sound for granted most of the time I lived up in that part of the country but now, having spent more than a decade living in the sweeping prairie of Oklahoma, I miss it a great deal. And that’s why pictures like the one you see here are so special to me :)

While this might appear to be a loon swimming on a lake, that’s not actually the case at all. This is a small painted-wood replica of a loon, about 1.5 inches from beak to tail, sitting on top of an overturned glass bowl in front of a crumpled piece of aluminum foil.

This is a technique I have used before but never with an actual macro lens, and the results are kind of stunning. At least to me, anyway. I shot this at f/11 but it looks more like f/2.8 because the background is so blurry and the depth of field is razor-thin. That’s the benefit of using a macro lens though, especially a telephone one like the Nikon 105 f/2.8 FL-ED. It lets you get super close to subjects, even tiny things like this little loon, and get amazing photos without the need to zoom in or crop in post. Originally I had not planned on using an overturned bowl but I kind of like the effect, almost like this is a real loon making ripples on the surface of a calm lake.

Incidentally, I got this loon from my mom years ago and I love having it sit on our shelf in the living room–If you’re reading this entry, thank you Mom!

If you have been following Weekly Fifty for a while, you know how much I enjoy doing close-up shots of…well, pretty much anything. I got a set of close-up filters way back in…2015? 2016? I can’t remember anymore but my goodness I have used those things a lot over the years. It’s so fun to discover the beauty in everything around us that is often overlooked simply because aren’t looking close enough. Ordinary objects like pencils and toys and flowers become works of art when viewed up close, and a cheapo set of screw-on filters can help you unlock this magical world just waiting to be discovered.

But you know what’s even better? An actual macro lens :)

In October I finally got a lens I have been looking at for a long, long time: The Nikon 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED. I know there are newer F-mount macro lenses with similar focal lengths from third parties like Sigma and Tamron, but I have had my heart set on this particular lens and was glad to finally pick it up when Nikon had a sale recently. And my goodness, this thing is incredible. What you’re seeing here is the first of many close-up shots you are likely to see over the coming weeks and months, all thanks to this lens. This was actually one of the first pictures I took with it, and it showed me how incredible this lens is but also how much I have to learn. And when it comes to photography, I sure do enjoy learning.

A couple of things to note here: First, this was shot at f/19. Seriously. That just goes to show just how insane things like depth of field are when working at close distances. This piece of candy is less than an inch from front to back and yet, only about half of it is in focus. Maybe a third. And that’s at f/19! I used a tripod, ISO 100, and a 3-second exposure to get this shot and it hopefully gives you an idea of how little the margin of error is when working at such close distances. This is just an ordinary piece of candy, but it could almost be a work of art just because we are seeing it so close.

Yeah…I’m looking forward to learning more about this lens :)

I just love shooting pictures in the fog. It’s one of the most challenging conditions in which to take photos, but the results are singular. There’s just no other way to get shots like this unless conditions are just right. You can’t fake this, and most of the time you can’t even plan for it. You just have to keep your eyes open, recognize these opportunities when you see them, and have your gear ready (along with a knowledge of how to use it) to get a shot. When my kids and I went outside on this particular morning in mid-October during the fall of 2021 I didn’t even have any specific intention to take this picture, but as soon as we left the house and started playing in the street we all realized just how incredibly thick the fog was. We could barely see across the street, much less down the street to our neighbor’s house. Right away I knew I could get an interesting photo but it would require some quick thinking before the fog evaporated.

I told my oldest son to get my bike, ride to the corner, and then cycle back slowly so I could take a few pictures. While he was on the way down I grabbed my d500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and after a little while I honestly couldn’t even see him through the thick cloud that had descended on our neighborhood. He soon turned around and started the return trip, and I basically just fired off dozens of shots at f/2.8 hoping I would get one where he was right in the middle of the street like you see here. I didn’t want to bark orders to him about where to go and how to look, since the entire scene had a strange, calm stillness to it that was almost palpable. The result is something that looks like a shot out of a scary movie, and one that I don’t think I’ll be able to repeat any time soon…if ever.

Three notes about the image: Yes it has been edited to remove my son’s face. I don’t post pictures of my kids online publicly, but I really wanted to share this particular image, so the result is the compromise you see here. I used Photoshop to essentially copy/paste some fog over his head so you can’t see his face, and if that’s too much editing…well, it’s a creative choice I can easily live with. The other note concerns the car in the background, which you might not even notice at first. It’s actually much farther away than it might seem, and I can assure you my son was not in danger at all. A few seconds after this I did let him know that a car was coming up the street, and he had plenty of time to pull over and let it pass. I think it adds kind of an interesting layer to the image though, almost like he is being stalked by a nameless monster–one that you might not even see at first but is definitely there once you look a bit closer. Finally, even though this looks like it was edited to be black-and-white, I can promise you that what you see here is what we saw on this morning: a world shrouded in fog, devoid of color. It was really cool.

This is not a black and white photo.

It looks entirely monochromatic, sure, but the image you see here is exactly what I saw in person when I took this shot. It’s also, contrary to what one might assume, not a picture of the moon. This is the sun peeking through layers of clouds and fog on a Thursday morning in mid-October, and it’s a shot I never even considered until one of my kids made a rather astute observation.

To set the scene: K-12 schools were closed on this day due to Fall Break, and I was out in the front yard tossing the football around with my boys while my wife was inside getting some research done for her job. It had rained the previous day but overcast skies kept the humidity level high, and the next morning the whole neighborhood was enveloped in fog was so think we could hardly see our neighbor’s house. The stillness of the air, combined with the near-zero visibility, created an almost otherworldly scene punctuated with the sounds of my kids saying “Look at that spiral!” and “Good catch!”

I was right there in the mix with my boys with my mind split between tossing the ball and marveling at the fog, when my oldest son cried out “Dad, look at the sun!” I turned my gaze eastward and saw a bright patch of light in the clouds, but then I looked closer and realized that through all the haze we could actually look directly at the sun. I ran inside, grabbed my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and hurried back outside to see if I could get a good shot.

I have learned from lots of pictures of the moon that it helps to have something in the foreground to create a sense of scale and context. (A picture of a bright circle in the sky is, in and of itself, just not that interesting.) I shot through a gap in the branches of the pine tree in our front yard at f/2.8, and quickly realized that aperture was way too small. The foreground was a blurry mess and didn’t look interesting at all. I quickly dialed my lens down to f/22, shot another picture, and the needles were too sharp. The Goldilocks-style sweet spot was f/11 which gave me just enough foreground blur (but not too much) and a clear shot of the sun, and I positioned myself so it looked like the sun was cresting a foggy hill–notice how the lower third is just a bit darker than the rest.

Five minutes later this scene was gone, and while I don’t know when I will get the chance to shoot a photo like this again I was thrilled to have the opportunity and know how to operate my camera, and make use of the elements around me, to get an interesting picture.

Many years ago I was traveling from Oklahoma to Nebraska when I came across an interesting street sign on Highway 36 just west of Washington, Kansas. It bore the name of an all-too-familiar recurring track in the Mario Kart franchise–the bane of many a racer’s existence, and the cause of more than a few controllers’ untimely demise after being hurled against the wall. Even so, Rainbow Road holds a special place in the heart of many Mario Kart players–perhaps precisely because of the challenge–and I was stunned to see an actual Rainbow Road street sign IRL, as kids these days might say.

Alas, when I first drove past that sign it was dusk and I had a schedule to keep, so I didn’t stop to get a picture. Over the years I took that route through Kansas on more than one occasion specifically to get a shot of the street sign, though my efforts were stymied every time. So when I found myself driving, once again, through Kansas earlier this year I made it a point to see if I could get a shot of this sign. However, I didn’t take my normal route. Instead, I went north through Washington on a small two-lane road which, after a few miles, turned to gravel, veered east, and then back north after joining up with–you guess it, Rainbow Road.

There’s a few miles of this stretch of road before it meets up with a highway that make for great photo opportunities such as the one you see here. I don’t know that this is the best shot one could get along this drive, but this scene certainly did make for an interesting picture in and of itself. I pulled over, got out my Nikon D500 and 70-200mm lens, and got to work composing this shot. It turned out to be trickier than I thought, though thankfully the sky was cloudy enough to case a nice diffused light over the entire scene. The challenge became how to capture an interesting shot of this street sign: what angle do I shoot from? What focal length do I use? What aperture and, as a result, what kind of depth-of-field am I going for? I ended up opening the door of my car so I could kind of half-climb into it, basically using the rear seat as a ladder, so I could get my eyes level with the street sign. I wanted a shot of the road going off into the distance, and I liked the two yellow markers on either side indicating the presence of a ditch. I like how it turned out, and I think it captures the essence of the scene quite well.

Two other notes: First, the road you see isn’t actually Rainbow Road. It’s 28th Road. Rainbow Road is the one I’m driving on, and you can’t actually see it in this shot. Kind of counterintuitive, but it’s true :)

Second, I had to do a bit of retouching on this picture to remove a day/date indicator on the stop sign that someone had written in marker, as well as a rusty bolt on the lower-right part of the N. Notice how there is only one bolt holding the sign to the post: that’s not how street signs are attached. There are almost always two bolts, as you can see on the 28th Road sign, but I didn’t like the unsightly rust on the lower bolt. Enter Photoshop, and thanks Adobe for making this possible :)

One final note to any who find themselves on this stretch of gravel in the middle of Kansas…make sure to watch out for errant turtle shells or ill-placed banana peels. And if you see a blue shell flying overhead, it’s best to run for cover.

After weeks of photos featuring airplanes and wind turbines, this image is much more simple and also serves as the final shot in this series of photos from my trip to Nebraska. This was also, fittingly, the last thing I shot before putting my camera gear away and just focusing on getting back home. I think this was off of Highway 77 but I don’t remember exactly, though it was definitely somewhere in Kansas. From a compositional perspective this is about as simple as you can possibly get: the windmill lining up on the left third of the image, and the grass exactly filling the bottom third. There’s a clear subject, a sense of perspective with the grass in the foreground blurred out due to depth of field, and a wide open sky on the right side. No clouds, no birds, no trees, just a simple shot of a windmill on the prairie. And I like it that way.

While I appreciate the sheer size of the metal wind turbines so prominent across the midwest, there’s something special about a simple windmill–rusty after years of being blasted by the elements–sitting in a grassy field against a deep blue sky that seems distinctly Middle American. This image could have been taken 100 years ago and it would look almost the same, and hopefully 100 years from now this windmill will still be here for future generations to consider.

I shot this with my Nikon D500, 70-200 f/2.8 lens, at 200mm with an aperture of f/2.8. Is that lens overkill for such a photo? Maybe, but then again, without the f/2.8 aperture it wouldn’t have the delicious foreground blur that helps you feel like you are part of the photo. Shooting this was a good way of going back to basics, so to speak, and using fancy gear to take a very simple but very effective picture. I hope I can stop and see this windmill again on my next trip to Nebraska, and hopefully people will still see it standing tall for years to come.

If you’re tired of wind turbine photos, don’t worry: this is the final one I plan on posting. Maybe. Hopefully. Who knows. In any case, here’s yet another photo of the Kansas prairie and some wind turbines, but just like the others I have shared recently, this one is distinctly different in a way that I haven’t yet been able to photograph until now.

In a way this isn’t a picture of wind turbines or hay bales or anything like that. It’s a picture of scale. It’s meant to display the vastness of the rolling hills in Kansas, in a way that you can’t really get without something in the foreground and something else way in the background. Out west you can get these kinds of shots with mountains in the background that clearly conveys a sense of scale, but what do you do when you trade high peaks for open blue skies? Simple: find something else to use instead.

I shot this on my Nikon D500 at 200mm on my 70-200 f/2.8 lens, with the aperture set to f/8. I tried a wider aperture but the wind turbines in the distance were too fuzzy to even tell what they were, and f/8 gave me just the right combination of sharpness and background blur. If you look closely though, you’ll notice something interesting about the turbines: they’re blurry, but not in the way you might expect. Rather than losing sharpness due to depth of field, the towering columns and spinning blades appear wavy and ill-defined due to the mirage effect that happens when hot air rises from the ground and causes light to bend.

I was trying to capture an image that, like some of my other recent images, shows the sheer vastness of the midwestern vistas. It’s tricky to do that with a telephoto lens, but I think this picture does a pretty decent job due to the compositional elements of foreground and background. At the lower portion of the photo you can see hay bales receding into the distance, followed by rolling hills and then two layers of wind turbines: the two in the middle are closer and the two on the edges are father away. It all comes together to form an image that slowly recedes away from the viewer and, in doing so, helps illustrate just how big this scene really is.

If there’s one thing I’m not happy about in this picture it’s the editing artifacts where the sky meets the ground. I darkened the sky just a bit in Lightroom to make it look more like when I actually took this picture, and there’s a bit of a white line or some kind of border as a result that seems a bit artificial. I don’t care for it, but I also don’t care enough to spend a long time tweaking the original RAW file. I’m happy with the shot as-is, and that’s good enough for me :)