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

In looking through some of my photos from Fall 2019 I realized I didn’t have too many of one of my favorite subjects, that of magnolia seed pods as they begin to constrict and force out the beautiful red seeds that lie within. I’ve posted several images of these seed pods over the years here on Weekly Fifty and maybe that’s why I wasn’t all that interested in taking more pictures of the same subject again. It felt like a been-there-done-that scenario, and I don’t want to shoot the same pictures of the same things over and over.

When I went out for a short walk around Theta Pond in mid November I certainly didn’t plan on taking a picture of yet another magnolia seed pod. In fact, most of the trees had long since shed their seeds which eliminated even the opportunity of getting the same type of picture I had gotten many times before. I had my D7100 and 50mm lens just in case I saw something interesting, and after some rather boring photos of geese wandering around I found this one single seed pod that had not yet fallen to the ground, and realized that I actually could make something interesting and new from a very familiar subject.

The thing I realized I could do to make this picture a bit more compelling, as opposed to just a bunch of red seeds sticking out of a brown husk, was to adjust my position (as well as the aperture of my lens) such that the background would be more than just blue sky or green leaves. Far above this seed was a cypress tree spreading a beautiful canopy of brown feathers across the sky, and I realized that was the key to the whole operation.

This seed pod was about ten feet in the air which meant I had to use Live View, and on a D7100 (remember, this camera came out in 2013) that’s not exactly a task that requires minimal patience. It’s slow, clunky, and choppy and forget about using a zoomed-in view to check focus. As such I decided to shoot at f/2.8 in order to get a little more room for error in terms of depth of field, which turned out to be a good thing because the shots at f/1.8 had a background that was just a giant brown blurry mess. It wasn’t pleasing to look at in the least, whereas the bokeh was rendered much more beautifully at f/2.8.

See those white parts on the left–the balls of blurry light that seem as if they frame the seed pod? Yeah, that was completely intentional on my part. After about a dozen shots I discovered that I could position myself in such a way as to make the seed pod show up between those highlights, as well as the one on the right, and the result is actually quite similar to my mockingbird picture from last week. A good picture isn’t just about the subject, but the other elements in the frame that serve to augment the image. That’s what I tried to do here and I think it worked pretty well.

As I mentioned in my photo commentary last week, I don’t usually schedule specific pictures for certain days just like my photo from last week I’m making an exception here. I didn’t take this picture so I could use it as the first image of 2020, but as I was looking through my image collection I thought it might be an appropriate way to ring in the new year. So here you go :)

I shot this back in the fall of 2019 in mid afternoon on a sunny day, and the composition was a bit different for me because of how the light hits the flower. Typically I don’t use backlighting very much but I thought it would work pretty well in this case, and think it makes the resulting image look a bit more interesting and dynamic as a result. If the sun were behind me it would have illuminated the entire flower evenly, but as such I like the white glow around the edge and, as a bonus, the fun highlights behind it in the background. Aperture selection on my 50mm lens here was a little tricky since I knew I wanted a nice blown-out background, but I also wanted the flower to be fully in focus and f/1.8 would have made this almost impossible. F/4 seemed like a bit too far the other way, so I compromised with f/3.3.

I think it worked out fairly well though I must say the background, while being bright and colorful, is a bit too busy and cluttered for my taste. In any case I hope this flower helps bring a smile and sense of optimism to you as you start 2020, and here’s to a year full of new life and new possibilities :)

Cheers!

First of all…Merry Christmas! I hope this day, and this season, finds you and your family happy and well, and may you be given peace and love as we celebrate the birth of Christ. John 3:16 says that “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, that whoever believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” How incredible to think that the baby born in a manger over two millennia ago, because there was no room for his family at the inn in Bethlehem, would one day be the savior of all mankind. Praise God for His saving grace, and for cleansing us from sin by the blood of his own son.

I usually don’t plan my pictures here on Weekly Fifty to coincide with any particular time of year, but for this one I did want to make it a little special due to the nature of the picture. It has nothing to do with Christmas, but this picture does have a great deal of meaning for me personally. Years ago one of the first pictures I took with my Nikon D200 and 50mm lens which made me realize that yes, even a novice like me could produce interesting photographs, was a mockingbird sitting on a shrub. It was the first photo I ever used here on Weekly Fifty (well, technically the second, but the first was just a snapshot with my Panasonic CZ7 pocket camera) and I’ve often wished I could go back and re-shoot that image knowing what I know now.

Not long ago I had that very opportunity.

I was walking across campus with a friend of mine on the way to a meeting when I came upon a very similar scene from that shot I posted more than six years ago: a mockingbird hanging out on a shrub. I didn’t have my camera with me but I took note of the scene, and the next day I brought my D7100 and 50mm lens on the off-chance that the bird would still be there. And it was :)

I tried to be a little more intentional this time around, but as with all wildlife photography there wasn’t much about the situation that I could control. Still, I took note of things like lighting, background, f/stop, and even background elements like students walking past, to create what I think is a far superior image. I shot some at f/2.8 and then a few more at f/1.8, moving myself around the hedge slowly and carefully so as not to startle the bird. It regarded me with mild curiosity and hopped around a bit, but didn’t seem to mind my presence too much. I was really hoping to catch the light in its eye, which I was thankfully able to do once it turned its head just so, and I also moved myself such that the lights coming through the trees in the background would create a nice pleasing blur.

This was a really fun shot to take and I’m so glad I got to essentially revisit one of my favorite scenes from so many years ago. It was an enjoyable example of how much I’ve learned, but also a good reminder of how much I still have left to figure out :)

Merry Christmas to all of you, and I hope you had a good 2019. Here’s to 2020 and many years beyond.

To wrap up 2019* I wanted to take a look back at the past year, and even farther, and talk about where things with Weekly Fifty have been, where they are now, and where I see them going in the new year and beyond.

*I know we still have almost two weeks left in the year, but I figure this is close enough :)

Sometimes I really wish I had a proper macro lens. There aren’t too many occasions on which it would be useful, but this was definitely one of them. I made do with my usual 50mm lens and close-up filters, but good gravy I think an actual macro lens would have been so much better! Maybe someday :) In the meantime I have fun with my cheapo close-up filters and I do enjoy getting shots like this, if nothing else for the sheer challenge of it all.

The sun was going down one evening early in November and I had just come from inside the house with a garbage bag full of trash that was bound for the bin, but I stopped short when I saw this wasp sitting on the black lid. He was just sort of minding his own business and didn’t seem interested in stinging anyone, so I ran inside and grabbed my D7100, which already had my 50mm lens attached, screwed on a +10 filter, and ran back (though tiptoeing the last few yards) to see if I could get a shot of this little bug before he flew away. I didn’t know how long I had to take the shot so I tried to act quickly, and thankfully the results were decent enough when it was all over.

I don’t often use my +10 filter because the depth of field is just too unwieldy, but I knew that for a shot like this it was going to give me a lot better results than a +4 filter. I also don’t like using wide apertures with a +10 filter because, again, depth of field. But because there wasn’t much sunlight left, and because I was shooting with my D7100 and not my D750 (and, hence, couldn’t raise the ISO very much without the picture becoming mired in digital noise) I ended up shooting at f/4. In fact, I shot this scene in Manual as opposed to Aperture Priority because I wanted to make sure I was getting the precise results I was hoping for. My final exposure settings were 50mm, f/4, 1/125 second, ISO 400, a little energon, and a lot of luck.

I used Live View as well, which is super unwieldy on the D7100, but it was the only way I could be sure of getting anything close to in focus. I knew I wanted the eye to be as sharp as possible so that was my main goal, but this was made even more tricky since the wasp wouldn’t hold still and kept on crawling, slowly, around the textured trash can lid. I wish the lighting would have been just a bit better but in general I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, and it was fun to get the chance to use my (very limited) macro gear for something a bit different than I usually shoot.