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

This is the final picture I took during my trip to the Boundary Waters this summer. I shot this looking northeast out on to Clearwater Lake right from the dock, and if you look very closely in the middle along the right side you’ll see a bit of an Easter Egg, so to speak. A Loon, the state bird of Minnesota, casually swimming in the chilly waters as if to bid us a fond farewell on this overcast morning.

On Tuesday night my cousins and I had a campfire roaring for several hours as we talked long into the evening, but eventually the flames died to embers and we started to tidy up a few things for the trip back home the next morning. What a time it had been–three days completely separated from society, well out of range of any road or radio signal. Just the three of us and our canoe, and we knew the trip was coming to a close. They had been to the Boundary Waters several times before but for me everything was a new first experience and I tried to take in as much as I could and enjoy, as well as appreciate, everything from the fishing to the rowing to the sitting around and talking. But when the sun goes down and the lights go out and you know it’s time to close things down, there’s not much else to be done but head for bed and wait for the morning. Soon I was in my hammock listening to the sounds of crickets…and that’s when I felt the first raindrop.

Soon a drizzle became a downpour, and it didn’t let up all night. I slept fitfully, thinking about the sort of things you might expect of a new camper like myself: did I pack everything securely? Did we pull the canoe up on shore? Will everything be wet in the morning? What if the rain doesn’t let up? And on and on it went, with me slipping in and out of sleep all night long until about 6am when I resigned myself to the forces of nature. I got up, started gathering my things and taking down my hammock, and looked for some energy bars that were in the bottom of my soggy pack. The rain was unrelenting, and the three of us slowly packed everything into the canoe and an hour later we were on the water and on our way back home.

But nature was not done with us yet.

We had to paddle the length of Caribou Lake against the wind while the rain fell in sheets all around us. It was over three miles and while I don’t know how long it took, it felt like days. We were in good spirits through it all, because we knew there was nothing to be done and complaining wouldn’t help, but by the end were simply exhausted. Then we had to portage all of our water-logged gear over to Clearwater Lake and do it all over again.

It was not an easy task. But it was one I am glad to have done, and I do not believe I have ever been so relieved to put my feet down on a sandy beach in all my life. Clearwater Outfitters, where we rented the canoes and some other gear, is in a cove that keeps the waters calm so you can’t really tell how windy it was just from looking at this picture, but my goodness it felt like mythical Aeolus himself was against us. And at the end of it all I wanted one last picture to document the events, which is what you see here. It’s a quick snapshot from my iPhone, and it might not look like a whole lot to you, but for me there’s some really intense memories wrapped up in this single frame.

And that’s why I like photography :)

This photo marks a first for me. It’s either a really big deal or nothing at all depending on your perspective, and honestly it probably isn’t anything to raise a fuss over whatsoever. It’s just that this image is different than any other I have posted on Weekly Fifty. Ever. For one simple reason: it’s the first time I’ve shared a picture that I took with my cell phone.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those purists who thinks that real photographers have to use a fancy-pants expensive camera, or that real photography requires expensive dedicated camera gear. Shoot what you like with the gear you have, and don’t worry what anyone else thinks. At least that’s my general approach, and it has worked pretty well for me over the years. The reason I started Weekly Fifty was to hold myself accountable for using my camera gear more and, as a result, grow as a photographer. Because of that I have only ever shared pictures that I have taken with my cameras and not, well, my phone camera.

In this case though, I have to make an exception: there’s no way I was going to bring one of my dedicated cameras on a canoe trip across two portages in the middle of absolutely nowhere just south of the Canadian border. I did bring my Fuji X100F with me on this particular trip, which I used for two sunset photos that I posted a few weeks ago, but that camera, though small, is not exactly pocketable and not at all waterproof. Thus, when my cousins and I set out for a day-long canoe trip from our campsite across some portages in search of a waterfall, the only camera I felt comfortable bringing was my iPhone. (Which just happens to have a bit of water resistance.)

I got this shot as we were paddling across the eastern tip of Pine Lake on a warm day in June with me taking up the middle position in the canoe. It wasn’t exactly the type of scenario where I could position our watercraft just so to get the perfect shot, so I just put my paddle down, grabbed my phone, and made the best of what I had to work with. I took a few pictures mostly paying attention to the horizon line (I didn’t want it too high or too low in the frame) and the clouds overhead, and of the half dozen shots I was able to snap this was my favorite. There’s no editing here, just an image straight from my iPhone camera, though I believe the built-in software plays a bit with the highlights and shadows to get an even exposure even if the end result looks a tad HDR-ish at times.

I’m really pleased with how this turned out: you can see miles into the distance and I think it captures a sense of how remote the BWCA really is. A remoteness I had never before experienced, and hope to once again someday.

I realize that this picture seems like it has very little to do with perambulating, but part of the title is just the simple fact that I’m not very good at coming up with titles. In typical Simon fashion I don’t know what kind of flower this is, but I do know that it’s big. Large. Huge. At least by my reckoning, anyway. My wife and I walk by this flowering plant every morning on our usual route while our kids bike up ahead, and for a while now I’ve thought about taking a picture because it’s just such an interesting flower to look at. Most days I simply forget to bring my camera and on days when I do remember there’s usually some kind of aesthetic issue: bad lighting, harsh shadows, or the flower itself is a bit closed-up and not very photogenic.

On this particular morning I don’t think I struck photographic gold or anything, but it was a rainy, overcast morning and I do think it made for some good lighting and a nice bit of texture with the damp petals making the pinks and reds just a shade or two richer. I brought my D500 and 85 f/1.8 lens so I could get some shots of the kids on their bikes, but turns out that camera/lens combo worked great for this picture too. I shot this at f/2.8 because that lens isn’t all that sharp wide open and depth of field is super difficult to control at f/1.8, and f/2.8 still gave me plenty of background blur while making all important parts of the flower as sharp as a tack. I played around with composition a bit, shooting from different angles until I got a background that I liked: the street receding into the distance, with the flower mostly against dark earthy colors instead of the sky. I kind of wish it were a bit more isolated with that second flower in the background not present, but I didn’t want to go altering the scene or, worse, damaging the plant just to get a shot. Besides, I know the guy who lives here and I don’t think he would like it too much if I went around bending and poking his plants while snapping some photos.

This is another classic example of the type of photo I find myself taking so often: it’s a rather normal subject, in a rather unremarkable situation, that I see on a fairly regular basis, and yet I thought it would make for an interesting photograph. And I think it worked out pretty well. If you scroll back far enough here on the blog you will see a handful of similar photos–that is to say, Indian Paintbrush flowers in the morning light, including one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. These flowers practically litter the countryside here in Oklahoma, but it wasn’t until the night I shot this image that I even found out their name–a bit of trivia that came about during a conversation I had with my neighbor after I put my camera away and got on my bike to ride back home after taking this shot.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. The point is, there isn’t anything inherently unique about this flower or this setting, and yet it made for a pretty cool shot.

So about the image: Each spring my neighbor lets a rather large patch of his two-acre lawn go unmowed which means we get a little sliver of honest-to-goodness wildflowers and other flora just across the street. It doesn’t take long for this spot to fill with flowers of all types including the one you see here, and as we were walking past his house after dinner I thought it would be fun to go back the next day and take a couple of shots. (We’re good friends with these neighbors, and I did clear it with him to make sure he didn’t mind me poking around on his grass with my camera.) The next evening as the kids were getting ready for bed I hopped on my bike, pedaled a few hundred yards, and started snapping some shots. I even found myself literally on the ground in a prone position trying to line up everything just so.

I probably took about 50 shots of flowers, both Indian Paintbrush and otherwise, and this one rose to the top as my personal pick of the litter. I followed the same principle as the dandelion image from earlier this year in that I realized I could make the flower stand out a bit more if I put it against a darker background. While the dandelion had a much greater degree of contrast with the tree behind it, this flower enjoys the advantage of having some really cool rim lighting around the petals which was really fun in its own right. I used the trust old D7100 and 50mm lens and shot this at f/2.4 so as to get the flower tack sharp without getting too carried away with depth of field. I tell you what man, that camera and lens combination isn’t fancy but it sure does get the job done. Not even in a pinch either–just for general photography.

It did feel a little weird crawling, literally, in my neighbor’s field for 15 minutes but I’ve really tried to abandon any sense of self-consciousness I used to have about that sort of thing. I had permission to be there, I wasn’t causing any harm to anyone, and as I was leaving I ended up having a really pleasant conversation with a neighbor across the street whom I did not know but now wave at every time we go past his house. No big moral or grand lesson here, other than to say that it’s fun to take photos, even of familiar subjects in familiar settings, and see what happens as a result :)

Look, I don’t want to sit here and read too much into things that are really just simple photographs. After all, sometimes (I would argue most of the time) a cigar is just a cigar. And yet, it’s fun to let your mind run wild every now and then and imagine characters, dialog, emotions, and entire scenes where none really exists. I think that’s what makes this picture kind of interesting to me. Someone can look at this and just see two flowers after a bit of rain. Someone else might see a different scene entirely.

But first, the photo itself.

I shot this in a vacant lot while out on a walk with my wife and kids–a lot that, after walking past it many times over the past few weeks, I knew contained a lot of flowers. (Side note: Notice a trend here? I used to take lots of photos while out walking around Theta Pond on the OSU campus. That was before the pandemic…) I brought my D500 with, partly because I really like the images it produces but also because it has a decent degree of weatherproofing which I thought might come in handy if the rain started back up again. Also, because I knew before we left that I might end up taking a shot of some flowers I thought the flip-out screen might come in handy. And sure enough, it did :) Soon we came across the lot and I stayed behind for a bit to take a few shots while the rest of my family went on ahead, and even though the lighting was great and there were indeed a lot of flowers, I found that I had a bit of trouble actually getting a good shot.

Maybe I just didn’t know what I was going for other than to take a picture of some flowers, but for some reason things just weren’t quite clicking. I moved around a bit, tried a few different angles, and eventually came across the scene you see here. If I didn’t have the D500 it would have been pretty tricky and I most likely would have found myself on the ground, but the flip-out screen made this shot a lot easier. Normally I would take a shot of the flower in the background but I thought it was kind of neat how the flower in the foreground was closed in on itself and covered in rain drops. It almost looked like it got into an argument with the flower behind it, and turned away while shedding some tears. If you wanted to extrapolate a bit further you could even go so far as to say that the flower in the background is pleading with the other one: I didn’t mean what I just said! I’m sorry…can you forgive me?

But then, interpretations like that are best left to English majors and poets, not yours truly. To me it’s just a couple of flowers on a rainy day, but it can be fun to speculate :)