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

One of the reasons I don’t share pictures of my kids on Weekly Fifty is because I want these pictures to be about the art and craft of photography, not a way for me to show off or draw attention to my family. Even when I do have pictures of my kids I don’t show their faces partly because I like to keep the focus on other elements of the picture, but mostly because at heart I’m still one of those paranoid Xennials who isn’t quite comfortable sharing photos of his children for the whole world to see. This one, though, I thought was worth putting up.

When I was a kid one of my favorite comics was Calvin and Hobbes. I remember reading it religiously in the newspaper each morning, laughing at the zany antics of the yellow-haired six-year-old and his tiger friend, but entirely missing the deep layers of subtext and social commentary hidden just beneath the surface of the pen-and-ink drawings and words of dialogue. Several years ago my wife’s parents bought me the Complete Calvin and Hobbes, a boxed set of every comic ever written as well as several pages of introductory text from the author Bill Watterson, and it has held a special place in my heart ever since. I read the set through a few times and kept it safe and sound, hoping that one day my own kids might get just as much enjoyment out of it as I did when I was young.

I don’t remember when my oldest son, who is now 8, took an interest in those comics but he took to them almost immediately, burning through all three books in a matter of about two weeks. He has re-read them several times over the years, and most nights he lugs one of the books up to his top bunk and ends his day chuckling at the situations Calvin and his tiger find themselves in while his little brother slips off to sleep below. Like most siblings, the younger one often follows in the footsteps of the older, and even though he can’t read he loves looking through the books nonetheless and gleaning bits of story from the exaggerated images on the pages. That’s what I found him doing on this morning when I wondered why he wasn’t up yet before I left for work. I quietly peered through his bedroom door only to find that he was he was awake, just reading Calvin and Hobbes quietly to himself in his bedroom.

Knowing that these moments can pass so quickly and with little warning, I ran as fast and as quietly as I could do get my Nikon D750 and affix the 85mm f/1.8 lens so I could get a picture of my youngest son lost in his own little world of adventure, excitement, and animal-assisted interplanetary exploration. The light was so dim I knew I would need all of it that I could get, so I shot at f/1.8, ISO 6400, and even then I settled for a 1/20 second shutter speed. The only reason it worked was because I was able to rest my camera on the door frame, otherwise the end result would have been too blurry from camera shake.

As soon as I shot this picture the moment was lost, since he heard my camera shutter and immediately turned around to see what was happening. (Something that wouldn’t have happened if I shot with a mirrorless camera like the Sony a9, but that’s an issue for other websites to explore.) He looked up with a huge grin on his face, and went back to reading. I went back to breakfast, also with a big smile, thinking that it was going to be a good day. And it was.

If this picture seems similar to the one from October 16, it’s because they were shot in relatively close proximity about two minutes apart. This one actually inspired the other one, but I’m posting it second because I like the other one better :) This was about 6:55am on a warm August morning and I wanted to get a picture of this flower with my D7100 and 50mm lens, but I also wanted to get something interesting in the background instead of just having the flower be the sole source of interest for the viewer. I started by taking a similar picture of the same flower, checking it out on my camera, and then realizing that the yellow light way in the distance would provide the dynamic element I was really looking for.

I’ve noticed this about pictures I take of flowers–I like them to be a little more than just a flower, which is partly why I was surprised that my recent image of a yellow burst of petals floating in a field was more interesting to me than I initially thought. In this case I didn’t just want the red petals by themselves, and on their own they didn’t look all that interesting. But combined with the yellow lights in the background, the flowers got a lot more compelling.

That’s one of the lessons I continue to learn as I take pictures: you might have an interesting subject, but if there’s not a secondary element to punch things up a bit it might not be all that great of a photo. Sometimes, sure, but as in the case of my image of fireworks with the moon poking through the bottom I sometimes find that it’s those extra bits that push an image from 10 to 11. Not that this picture is either of those (I’d give it more like a 5 or 6) but it’s still something worth paying attention to when you take a picture. What else, besides the main subject, can you get in the frame or otherwise add to the picture to make it just a bit more compelling?

I went back and forth on whether to use this as a Weekly Fifty photo, ultimately deciding to go with it even though I’m not really all that fond of the image. I shot it a few minutes after this one which I like much better, but on reviewing my Lightroom library I just couldn’t quite move on from this image despite my misgivings about it. I shot it with my 85mm lens though it would probably look much the same with a 50mm, and I think one reason I’m not all that happy with the resulting image is because it looks like the yellow flower is just sort of…floating in space. Shooting at f/1.8 on an 85mm lens leaves very little room for error when depth of field is concerned, and here you can see that even though the stem of the flower is mere inches (if that) behind the petals, it’s almost entirely blurred out due to the razor-thin DOF. To me, the resulting image just isn’t all that interesting compared to what it might have been if I shot at a smaller aperture.

And yet.

Something about the image of a yellow dot hovering as if in midair against a sea of green and red remained oddly compelling. I can’t quite put my finger on just what is interesting to me about this picture, but on second, third, and fourth look I started to appreciate something about it. It was shot just a few minutes after the other one I mentioned, and I think the combination of the yellow petals and red spots and even diffused lighting made for a scene that was much more than anything I could have created on my own if I set out to take a picture. And maybe that’s what I don’t quite get: I wouldn’t have just gone over to the neighbor’s field and shot this photograph on any normal day. It just wouldn’t have occurred to me, because it seems like a boring subject to look at. But the reality of the situation turned out to be a lot different than what I expected, and I actually find this image to be rather pleasing. Calming, even. A good way to start the day.

And some days that’s all you need.

Every now and then after it rains we get toads crawling up the glass door on the back of our house, and it’s fun to go out and take their pictures if circumstances allow. I’ve put one or two of these images here on Weekly Fifty in years past, but this one is markedly different because it was the first time I shot one with a close-up filter. I got the idea from my brother Phil who, the day before, showed me some pictures of a cicada shell in his back yard that he shot with a +10 filter on his 35mm lens. He used a tripod to get the shot just the way he wanted and it turned out beautifully, so when I saw this frog perched on our back door at 10pm after a rainstorm I thought I would borrow his technique to get a picture.

First of all, you might not be able to tell from the picture but this toad is in fact vertical, not horizontal. It’s about a foot off the ground on our glass door, staring up at the porch light. My wife noticed it as we were on our way to bed because she could see a toad-shaped silhouette on the door, so I went outside with my Nikon D750, set of close-up filters, and a flashlight. Initially I tried some shots with the +4 filter but I couldn’t get close enough to the toad to really get an interesting shot. I also didn’t know how to light the creature, which was turning out to be problematic. After some experimenting I ended up setting the flash light on our barbecue on the other side of the porch and aiming it directly at the toad, which gave it a nice glow from one side.

Then I took my camera and pressed it against the window to hold it steady, and took a few shots with the +10 filter. I had to use Live View because there was no way I could get my eyes in the right position to look through the viewfinder, and focusing was a bit tricky also. I ended up focusing manually and literally moving my camera up and down against the pane of glass until the eyes of the toad were sharp. Live View enabled me to zoom in as I was doing this in order to check focus, and I shot this at f/8 to get a good balance between shutter speed and depth of field. Even then I had to use a 1/90 second shutter which isn’t all that fast, but by holding my camera against the glass I was able to steady it enough to get a decent shot.

This was a super fun picture to take and I’m enormously proud of the result, having never taken anything like it before. So Phil, if you’re reading this, thank you for the inspiration :)

Some days you’re in the right place at the right time, and that’s definitely what happened here. This was on a hot Sunday morning in mid August and my wife and I were doing our best to shoo the kids outside, load them in the car, and head off to church without being too late. The boys and I made it out to the driveway while my wife was wrapping up a few last-minute things inside when I spotted this tiny little mushroom right next to the driveway. The top was no bigger than a dime, and with the sun poking over the horizon (as well as our departure for church being imminent) I ran through a couple scenarios in my head: ignore it and go about my day, grab my camera, or hope it was still there after church.

I chose Option 2, and ran inside to grab whatever camera my 50mm lens happened to be attached to. Turns out it was my D7100 which was fine, even though I like the tilt-up screen on my D750 for low-to-the-ground shots like this, but I didn’t want to take 30 seconds and switch lenses. The clock was ticking! I quickly screwed my +10 close-up filter on to the lens and ran (literally) back outside to see if I could grab a picture before it was time to leave.

I knew that shooting with a +10 filter was going to be a bit problematic in terms of depth of field, and I also knew I had to think quickly about composition and lighting, so I didn’t get to sit and ponder this shot as long as I would have preferred but I think it turned out fine in the end. I took a few shots at f/8 and then, after reviewing them on the camera, realized that I’d need an even smaller aperture to get enough of the mushroom in focus. I stopped down to f/11 and, since I was using Aperture Priority with Auto-ISO and a minimum shutter speed of 1/200 second, ended up with ISO 400 which looks great on a D7100. My boys helped me with picking an angle to shoot from and as luck (or perhaps divine intervention) would have it we got a few more shots, hopped into the car, and made it to church before the opening hymn.

After we got home my kids and I reviewed the shots and I found this one to be my favorite, partly because of the lighting but partly because of the blue in the background that helped the mushroom top to really stand out. It’s quite similar to another photo I posted earlier this year with a similar blue color in the background which, in both images, is our 2007 Toyota Matrix. Originally I didn’t really like the idea of my car in the background but after looking at the picture closer, especially on a smaller screen, I thought it did a real nice job of bringing out the subject in the center. I think the bright spots and dew drops in this other image are visually compelling as well, but the mushroom blended in a bit too much with the streak of yellow in the background.