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

This isn’t really about the picture, but the story behind it. The picture isn’t all that great, but making it was a bit more interesting than the image itself.

Every now and then I make the drive to Tulsa and about 40 minutes into the trip is a causeway across Keystone Lake. Immediately afterwards there is a gentle incline and at the top of the hill, a small road that turns south. If you look upwards as you cross the lake you can see a few houses on the bluffs overlooking the waterfront, and I have often thought about pulling over to take a picture. As with many photography situations there are always a thousand reasons to say no to that little voice in your head, but this time I decided to answer the call. Photographically speaking, that is.

I came prepared for the occasion too, with my X100F and a tripod and a plan. Well, sort of a plan. I had never been up to that neighborhood before so I didn’t really know what to look for or where to take pictures. I did some investigating on Google Earth and found what I thought would be a good vantage point, and before I left home I also set my camera just how I thought it would need to be when I got to the location: ISO 200 (base ISO for that camera), f/11, auto shutter speed, and ND filter activated. I had everything all ready to go, and was excited for a brief little photo adventure when I finally turned onto that little road at the top of the hill.

Almost immediately I ran into an issue I had not considered. The road was basically lined with a number of signs indicating that visitors were, in no uncertain terms, not welcome. I passed several Neighborhood Watch signs and got the feeling that my short visit to take a photo would be allowed a very little leeway. I don’t know how many signs I went past indicating that I should get back to the turnpike and mind my own business, but I got progressively more nervous with each one. Worse, I didn’t see any locations that would be good photo opportunities. I drove in a loop and eventually got back to the main road having never left my car but glad to have just made it out of there alive.

Then on the way back I realized…might as well go for it. If anyone asked me who I was or what I was doing I would just tell them I am taking a picture and hopefully that would be enough. I headed out from Tulsa, got to the road, turned south, and drove through the neighborhood with the (fake) confidence of someone who had lived there for ten years. I drove as far west as I could before coming across a sign that said “Prayer is the best way to meet God. Trespassing is the fastest.” That’s where I took this picture, taking care to stay on the road and not actually trespass on anyone’s property.

I was more than a little nervous so I didn’t spend too much time there. I hopped out, grabbed my camera and tripod, fired off a couple shots, and hightailed it outta there. (Tom Frye, if you’re reading this, you would have been proud.) I would have liked to spend some time walking around, looking for a better vantage point, and maybe even getting to know the residents but on this occasion I was happy just to have had the experience of taking a picture that was a little bit off the beaten path.

Sometimes it’s fun to just go out and shoot normal things at super wide apertures. That simple concept helped foster my love of photography several years ago, and to this day it remains a fun way to use my camera while seeing the world around me in a bit of a different light. When I shot this picture I had my D7100 and 50mm lens, and noticed a bush with yellow dried up leaves scattered all around its edge. It was the type of conventional, unassuming scene I would normally just stroll past but I saw that the leaves were slightly backlit and it made me wonder if it would be an interesting picture as a result. So out comes my camera, and a few shots later I ended up with this.

But what exactly is this? I’m not entirely sure. Most of my photos have a clearly-understood subject, and I think that was partly my intent here with the upper leaf being the first thing to draw your attention as a viewer. But as I keep looking at this shot the less I think it even has a subject at all, and the two yellow leaves are just part of the larger composition but not any more or less integral than anything else. Basically I don’t think this picture has one single subject, but the whole image kind of stands on its own as a complete entity with many different parts to draw your attention.

I mean, it’s just a brown plant. I’m not trying to make a grand statement here, but this is a bit of a different type of picture compared to what I’m used to shooting. There’s almost a sense of kinetic energy despite everything being dull and brown-toned, and I think that energy stems from the diagonal lines on the left and right side that almost look like cascading waterfalls. About a year ago I was fortunate enough to test the Sigma 40mm f/1.4 Art lens for a few weeks and I took some shots kind of like this, and even though this 50mm f/1.8 picture isn’t as sharp or compelling as what I could get with that other lens, I like it anyway :)

This is the one that almost got away.

As I left for work on a mild January morning a few months ago I noticed as soon as I opened the garage door that something wasn’t quite right. The whole neighborhood was shrouded in a thick fog, the kind that we only get a few times a year. I ran inside and told my two boys to come here, quick, and don’t worry about your shoes! They raced outside and immediately saw and felt what I was talking about. There’s a certain stillness unique to foggy mornings, where you can literally feel the air like a thin wet blanket as you move around beneath the trees. I had to get going so we didn’t spend too much time dwelling on it, but I was glad I got to share that quick moment with my kids before I left for the day.

A few minutes later I was driving south towards campus when I came across the scene you see above. It reminded me of the train scene in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, shot by the great Roger Deakins whose use of light and shadow in cinema is the stuff of legend. As I drove down the road, the light coming through the tree branches was almost breathtaking and it really felt like I was in the middle of a movie.

So what did I do? I thought about taking a picture, and then just kept on driving. I don’t know why, but it seemed to me in the moment that there wouldn’t be any way that I could actually capture a picture of the scene I saw before me, so why even bother trying?

And that’s when I stopped, turned around, and went back to get the shot.

Since I got my new Nikon D500 I’ve been keeping my D7100 and 50mm lens with me a little more often when I go to work, and thank the Lord I had it with me in my bag on this particular morning. I pulled on to a side street, grabbed the camera, ran out to the middle of the road, and snapped a few pictures. I didn’t have much time to plan or even think, but I knew I would need a large aperture to let in enough light for a fast shutter speed. I knew those tree branches had to be sharp. I shot a few pictures at f/1.8 and checked the LCD screen, and then quickly stopped down to f/2.8 in order to get the picture a little sharper since the trees in the foreground were just a little too blurry at such a wide aperture. I also moved my camera position, and instead of holding it I literally set it down on the road and pointed it upwards so I could get a more interesting point of view. I back-button focused on the street light, put the camera in continuous high-speed mode, and fired off about ten shots until the internal buffer filled up.

Why take a series of continuous shots? Because I’ve realized that when dealing with slow shutter speeds on a camera without a tripod or lens or sensor stabilization, your best chance at getting a sharp picture is to just take a boat-load of pictures :)

I shot this, like most of my pictures, in Aperture Priority with Auto-ISO and the resulting exposure of 1/60 second and ISO 3200 worked just fine. A little cropping and some other tweaks in Lightroom resulted in the picture you see here, which I think turned out beautifully. I kind of wish the power lines weren’t there but I didn’t want to go to the trouble of removing them in Photoshop, and I think they do help sell the idea that this is in an urban setting along with the street lights.

I’m so glad I turned around to get the shot.

This photo is similar in many ways to one that I shared on January 15. So similar, in fact, that it almost seems like a cop-out to put it here because it would seem there just isn’t much variation between the two. So why post it? Because it’s not about the subject, it’s about the lighting.

The first image was shot on a sunny afternoon in mid November which lit the whole scene in a warm glow while the bushes behind the magnolia seed pod had pockets of light shining through. It was lively and dynamic, despite the subject being most certainly deceased. This week’s photo is similar but the conditions in which it was shot were much different, which adds some subtle but important alterations to the image as a whole.

First and most importantly, I shot this on a cloudy day after a morning of light rain. That led to drastically different lighting conditions, and you might notice that the bushes behind the gumball are much darker than the magnolia seed. The other key change, and the one that I like the most, is that all the surfaces are wet. The rocks, the gumball, even the cypress leaf all have a shine to them that adds a sense of life and story to the picture.

To get this shot I held my D7100 with 50mm lens just below the rocky ledge and shot using Live View so I didn’t have to contort my body in strange ways. I took a few images at f/1.8 but shot this one at f/2.4 to get a bit more leeway in terms of depth of field, and I think the results turned out just fine. True the f/1.8 version had a blurrier background but at the cost of a less-defined subject, and that was a tradeoff I didn’t really want to make. Also, I should note that just because I’ve been shooting a lot of images with my new D500 doesn’t mean my old gear is useless. Quite the contrary! I still get plenty of use out of the old D7100, and if anything my D500 has continued to illustrate just how capable that old camera really is :)

I know what you’re probably thinking right now: what’s up with yet another picture of a goose? In truth I’m not exactly sure why I’ve had so many shots of birds this year, but for some reason I’m enjoying taking pictures like this. And in looking back at my Flickr library I don’t yet have a picture of a goose or duck standing one-footed on a rock…so there you go :)

When I left for work the morning I took this photo I grabbed my D500 which happened to have my 85mm f/1.8 lens attached, so I went with that just in case I came across any photographic situations. As often happens, at one point during the day I went out for a walk near Theta Pond and brought my camera with me only to find a small gaggle of geese hanging out on the west side of the water. This one in particular really caught my eye, partially because of how it (he?) was standing but also because of the lighting. The sun was behind me and cast a nice warm glow over the whole bird, with only a very small shadow just to the left of his (might as well use the masculine pronoun for easier writing) neck. He was preening his feathers constantly which made it really tricky to get a shot, especially with other geese swimming behind him, but I was able to get this single frame where he was perched with one foot and eyeing me somewhat skeptically.

As you might be able to tell I had to be low to the ground to shoot this, and as such it was nice to have my D500 since the rear screen flips out and the focusing in Live View is so much faster than my other cameras. I also had to consider the aperture, since depth of field is so thin on my 85mm lens but I really wanted to blur the background and isolate the subject. I figured I might as well try though, and opened the lens all the way to f/1.8 despite the fact that I knew I was likely to miss focus slightly or get some purple fringing as a result.

Turns out I nailed the focus just fine, and as for the fringing it’s not really a big deal. You can see just a bit of it along the bird’s back, but it’s not enough to detract from the image. Believe me when I say that a few seconds later this entire scene changed: more birds, different pose, and changing lighting conditions too. It’s fun to go for a shot like this and have it really work out :)