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

Over Black Friday weekend I made a purchase that I had been saving for since the beginning of the year: a Nikon D500. I bought it specifically to get shots of my kids as they play sports, and in a way this camera choice is a tangible artifacts reminding me of how far my two boys have come in the past eight years. My wife and I bought our first DSLR because our little Panasonic pocket camera didn’t take great photos of our newborn son, and that Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8 lens immediately sent our photo quality into the stratosphere. Since then we have made other gear purchases because of the needs they met–not simply because they looked cool or we had money burning a hole in our pocket. That’s actually the number one question I ask people when they seek my advice on a camera: what problem do you want it to solve? Once you know that answer, you can start looking for a camera or lens or other piece of gear that will do the trick. Over the years as our kids grew we bought different cameras and lenses in order to better document their daily activities, with my favorite being the Fuji X100F that I have mentioned so many times here on Weekly Fifty. I realized when our oldest son started YMCA soccer in the spring of 2018 that I wanted another arrow in my photography quiver to take better pictures of him, and the answer to that gear question was the Nikon D500.

I wouldn’t say that this picture would be impossible on my other cameras, but it would have been a lot more tricky had I not used the D500. For one, I needed to get on eye level with this duck which was aided dramatically by the flip-out screen on the back of the camera. My D750 has that too, but the D500 has dramatically improved Live View autofocus which really came in handy here. Were it not for that I’m not sure that this photo would exist, which I guess goes to show that while better gear won’t make you a better photographer, it can help to a certain degree depending on what you need it to do. I slowly crept up to this duck and used Live View to focus on its eye, and was able to take one or two pictures before it got spooked and went on its merry way.

What lens did I use, though? None other than the humble little 50mm f/1.8 that I’ve had since the beginning. It’s the lens that got this blog started, and it’s still one of my favorite pieces of gear that I don’t plan on replacing any time soon.

My brother Phil came for a visit with his family a few months ago and while they were here I got kind of fascinated at his use of close-up filters. Any longtime reader of Weekly fifty knows that I’ve taken my fair share of macro shots using close-up filters, but that kind of photography sort of ebbs and flows with me. I’ll be super into it for a while and then move on to something else, but when Phil was here it was kind of inspiring watching him find ideas for shots where I would have never considered to look. Even just out in my front yard he was pointing his camera at leaves, bricks, mailboxes…almost like he was seeing it anew with fresh eyes, and even though all those things are part of my daily life I never really thought about them as potential photo subjects. Watching him was a fun reminder that yes, there really are interesting photo opportunities all around, which is a lesson I feel like I’m constantly re-learning as I continue to explore photography.

Since their visit I have been taking a bit of a renewed interest in close-up photography, and this is one example of the fruits of my camera-related labors. In mid November we had some rainy days here in Oklahoma, and since those are some of my favorite shooting conditions I thought I would bring my camera to work and see if I could get any shots if the opportunity presented itself. I had a shot just like this in mind, so as I was walking through the gardens I kept my eyes open for a drop of water on a leaf. That’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years–I find that inspiration comes more easily if I at least have some kind of basic concept in mind for a picture and then seek out ways to capture that shot, rather than just wandering around and waiting for something to strike my fancy.

This was taken in the formal gardens right in front of the student union as I was on my way back to the office after meeting with a faculty member. I had my D7100 and +10 filter because I knew that I would need to get super close to get a picture of a water droplet on a leaf, and it took a few tries but I eventually got one that I was happy with. The first few didn’t work out as well as I hoped, partly because I was using too wide of an aperture and also because the overall composition just wasn’t super compelling, but this one ended up almost exactly like how I pictured in my mind. I wanted to have a picture where the drop of water was centered with some color in the foreground and background, and what made this one work in particular was how the yellow leaf on which the drop is resign lends a sense of depth to the composition. I had some other shots where the leaf was sideways which made the image seem kind of flat and uninspiring, but this one turned out pretty well.

I have taken other shots like this one over the years (kind of like how I have also taken shots of magnolia seed pods) but as long as I’m learning something new and finding creative ways to explore this type of image then I feel satisfied in what I have accomplished.

So here’s something you might not know about me…I get really nervous when I go out and take pictures in public. It’s one reason you rarely see photos of people here on the blog, and it’s something I’ve been trying for years to overcome to varying degrees of success. I just feel kind of self-conscious when I’m using my DSLR (or even my phone camera) in a public setting, as if everyone is watching me and wondering why I’m taking pictures of such boring, mundane objects. And I really don’t feel comfortable taking photos of people public parks or gathering areas. It feels like I’m intruding on their own personal space, even if they’re just in the background of a picture I happen to be taking and not actually the subject of my photo at all.

I shot this picture on a rainy afternoon after I got off work and was waiting for my wife to meet me outside her office. There’s a covered walkway between two buildings on campus where we meet up after work sometimes, and she told me it would be just a few minutes so I grabbed my D7100 and 50mm lens from my bag and looked around for something to shoot. After a few seconds I found it, right in front of me: the railing at the edge of the walkway. I thought the rain on the black paint made an interesting texture, and the autumn colors beyond the railing were a neat mix of greens and oranges that I really liked.

I set my exposure (f/1.8, 1/250 second, Auto-ISO value of 180) and snapped a single photo…and heard a door open just to my left followed by footsteps heading my way. Normally I would have taken a few more pictures, adjusting the aperture to see what results I could get at f/2.8 or even f/4, and maybe changed my angle of view, but as soon as another person entered my peripheral vision I immediately put down my camera and stood up. I went from feeling creative to feeling awkward, even though to the other person I was probably not on their attention radar one iota. He probably didn’t care one bit that there was a person taking pictures of a railing. He almost certainly had other things on his mind, and some dude with a camera wasn’t even close to registering on the scale of things that mattered.

And yet…I still felt the need to stop everything for the sake of…what? I don’t honestly know. This doesn’t have anything to do with the picture, but I thought I’d share it here and I’m wondering if any of you feel a similar way.

As for the photo, I like that it almost feels like two pictures. First, the obvious: a rainy railing overlooking an autumn scene. But it also looks like the panes of a frosted glass window, which is due to the huge aperture (and, thus, very shallow depth of fiend) and it’s a look I didn’t anticipate when I took the photo but in hindsight I think is pretty cool.

I don’t like taking pictures that are basically carbon copies of earlier photos, but I do enjoy paying homage to previous photos by way of making images that are inspired by their forebears. The photographic pronoun to a visual antecedent, if you will. When I shot this picture (about three minutes before last week’s photo, as a matter of fact) I specifically had another shot on my mind which I took almost exactly three years earlier. What attracted me to the initial image from November 2016 was a sense of color and backlighting, and I liked the contrasting colors too. So when I came across a similar scene near Theta Pond I wanted to use some of my lessons I learned taking the earlier photo in what was, hopefully, some new and interesting ways.

First of all, the subject. The original had a wide blade of yellow grass slicing vertically through the image, and when I saw a yellow leaf doing kind of the same thing I thought it would make for a similarly interesting picture. The original image also has a heavy mix of subject and background colors, and as such I wanted the background to play a key role here as well. I stood on my tiptoes to get this shot, with the goal of getting the balls of light (which was sunlight being reflected off of car headlights on University Avenue) in just the right spot so as to complement the leaves. I don’t know that it entirely worked, and I did end up with one image that I think is better in terms of subject-and-background composition, but in that one the leaf was just a little out of focus. So in the Rejected pile it goes!

I wouldn’t say that this picture is better than the original, and in some ways I actually prefer the 2016 incarnation, but I was making a clear attempt to take a picture based on lessons learned from three years prior. Sometimes the things I do when taking a picture are quite unintentional, or perhaps more along the lines of muscle memory, but other times I specifically try to incorporate things I have picked up along the way. If it works, cool. If not, no big deal. I still got to use my camera, and that’s always a win :)

Just as I don’t usually take photos with specific days or times of the year in mind for posting, I also don’t usually take them with the intention of showing them together as a specific group. This changes from time to time, like when I did my series of sunset images last summer, but for the most part I just post pictures here on the blog in no particular order and with no real rhyme or reason. However, when I shot this image I thought it would serve well as somewhat of a companion piece to last week’s photo of a magnolia seed pod.

As often happens with my Weekly Fifty photos I was out on a short walk around Theta Pond on campus and I saw this husk resting on a stone ledge, having long since served its purpose of creating seeds for eventual dissemination. Magnolia flowers, and their resulting central pods, are really a sight to behold but I don’t often think of these remnants as being photogenic or noteworthy at all. However something about this rather unremarkable scene gave me pause, and I’m glad I stopped to investigate.

I had my D7100 and 50mm lens with me at the time, and after using that thing combination for over six years I think my only real complaint, in terms of daily photographic use, is that the rear screen doesn’t flip out. Most modern cameras offer this feature and while Nikon DSLRs aren’t exactly known for their prowess with Live View (that’s what their new mirrorless Z system is for!) it is useful to compose with the rear screen from time to time. And when that happens, a flip-out screen sure would be nice. Such was not the case here so I made do with what I had, and despite having to contort myself at kind of an awkward angle I think I got a pretty good shot nonetheless.

I shot this at f/1.8 because I wanted maximum background blur, and really I think that’s the standout feature of this picture: not the subject, but the background. It’s almost like the purpose of the subject is specifically to draw your eye to the greenery behind it, and that’s something I don’t often think about when composing photos. I tried a few shots at f/2.8 but it just didn’t give me that silky smooth look I was going for (unlike last week when I specifically chose f/2.8) and I actually did end up moving the seed pod just a bit so I could get that brown curled-up leaf in the shot as well.