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

Here’s an interesting case of finding a photo opportunity in a somewhat unexpected scenario. I was out for a short walk around Theta Pond in the afternoon when I came across this…uh…plant? I don’t know what it is, but there’s a lot of them around the pond here at OSU and I’m no botanist as you probably know by now. Anyway, the scene was altogether unremarkable, except for one interesting twist: the sun was already getting low on the horizon which made for a unique mix of colors and light.

Normally when I’m taking pictures I tend to put myself between the light source and my subject, but in this case I did the opposite. By positioning the subject (i.e. this withering, brown, and mostly unremarkable leaf) between my camera the the light source (i.e. the sun) it created a neat effect where it almost seems like the leaf is glowing. I didn’t think about this at first, mind you, and it was only after a few minutes of playing around with different compositions that I stumbled across this particular angle and figured I would give it a try.

The first thing I did was put my camera (in this case, my Fuji X100F) in RAW instead of JPG because I figured I would need the leeway when editing. Then I had to figure out what to shoot and how to shoot it. I realized that if I got down low, shot at f/2.8, and tried to compose the shot in such a way that there would be a bit of foreground as well as background, it might look interesting. I put the leaf slightly off center and I think the end result works quite well. To give you an idea of what I was working with I returned a few hours later on my way home from work and took a picture after the sun had gone down a bit farther. You can see it below, and the leaves in the shot above are circled in red.

Pretty boring, eh? I guess it just goes to show how much of a difference lighting can make when taking photos. And I would challenge you to keep this in mind as well, especially at times of the year such as winter (for those of us in the northern hemisphere, that is) when the sun is often much lower on the horizon compared to the summer months. You might find that otherwise ordinary scenes become transformed into rich photographic opportunities.

I have taught a class called Information Technology Project Management at Oklahoma State University for the past four and a half years and it really is one of the standout parts of my job. While I do miss teaching high school, which I did in Minnesota for several years, I have really come to appreciate working at a university and also teaching college-age students. Many of them in my class are near graduation and they are getting ready to move away, start careers, or take a year off to just go see the world. It’s a fun opportunity to be able to teach them and each semester I cap off my class with a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

I always like to involve my kids in this process and usually make their consuming of said cookies contingent on their willingness to pitch in with the creation process. Normally I would just stand near them, hold my camera at eye level, and take a photo but this time I wanted to try something a bit different. I stood on a chair, held my Fuji X100F out at arm’s length, set the aperture to f/2.8, and fired off a few shots from directly above. I rather like the result even though I wasn’t entirely sure where to focus, and as such my son’s head on the left is a bit blurry but I do think it works to draw the viewer’s attention to the mixing bowl and other baking implements.

As I look back at photos of my kids that my wife and I have taken over the past seven years the ones that seem to have the most impact are the ones that also convey a sense of time, place, and activity. A headshot is great but if that headshot can be part of a larger story that’s even better, and I think that’s one reason I’m happy with this picture. I like that both boys are intently staring at the mixer, I like that there’s a bit of a mess on the counter, and I like that it clearly tells a story of something that’s happening. Plus I like that it involves homemade chocolate chip cookies :)

If last week’s post was about the end of one year, this week’s image is about the beginning of a new one. It’s a bit ironic though, since I shot this in November 2018 and what you’re seeing here isn’t the beginning of anything. In fact it’s the last gasp of light and life from our Chinese Pistache tree in our back yard, and the very next day after I took this photo the scene here was one of dull, lifeless brown. Still, the picture represents renewal for me despite what is actually happening in it, and I like to think that with the onset of another trip around the sun it’s pictures like this that are going to mean something a little more.

So a bit of background here. It was a chilly Saturday morning and I was eating breakfast with my kids while my wife slept (I like to let her sleep in on the weekend if possible) and noticed the sun peeking over our fence. Our trees had been losing their leaves and the green grass was riddled with spots of yellow and orange, and the early morning sun cast an almost otherworldly glow on the whole scene that was accentuated even further bit near-frozen dewdrops on nearly every surface. I wondered if it would even be possible to capture some of the scene with my camera but knew I only had a few minutes to try, so I grabbed my trusty Nikon D7100, popped on my 50mm lens, and set out to see what I could get.

One of the nice benefits of a newer camera like my D750 (which, as a model released in late 2014, isn’t even all that new anymore) is a tilting rear screen which makes composing low or high shots in Live View a lot easier. My D7100 doesn’t have any such feature so I simply held it as low to the ground as I could, focused as best as I was able to given the constraints of the situation and the fact that I was working in Live View as opposed to the optical viewfinder, and fired off a handful of shots hoping one of them would turn out. The trickiest part was finding a scene to shoot, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I didn’t want just a generic image of grass and leaves; I needed a focal point to draw in the viewer and serve as the subject of the image. After moving around a bit I found it in this leaf that you see above, which was poking upwards amidst the green grass and morning dew.

I shot this at f/2.8 instead of f/1.8 to give myself just a bit of leeway in terms of overall depth of field, and I think my favorite part is the bokeh ball just to the right of the pair of yellow leaves. It has the rather unique and, altogether unplanned on my part, property of being divided into three sections because of the way the light is altered by some grass. I didn’t notice that at the time I took this shot but realized, as I was looking through the pictures afterwards, that I rather liked that little bit and thought that it served as kind of an interesting added touch to the image.

So here’s to a happy, healthy, prosperous, and joyful 2019. Today is a day, and this year is a year, full of possibilities. So let’s go exploring.

To close out 2018 I thought I’d share this picture that I took in November on a rather unusually snowy morning here in Oklahoma. Where as the classic Christmas tune speaks of walking in a Winter Wonderland, we don’t usually get scenes like that down here and instead it’s more common to have temps in the 40’s with a smattering of snow every now and then. It’s a welcome sight, then, to wake up to snowfall and chilly temps even if it’s only temporary, and as such I figured it would make an appropriate image for the time of year as well as the Christmas season.

Most of the year I don’t really post pictures that have much in common with the dates on which they are published, usually because I schedule posts many weeks in advance and don’t have any kind of grand master plan behind the photos I take and share. As the year winds down though I do like to take a minute and reflect on things, if you will, and that sentiment is kind of echoed in this image. In some ways 2018 was a difficult one and while I’m not going to get into the details here, suffice it to say that as the year is drawn to a close I find myself really taking to heart the old adage of live each day to the fullest. Not in the sense that I have to do extreme skydiving or run triathlons or anything like that, but that partly because of some losses my family and friends have endured this year I really have made more of an effort to use my time more intentionally. Some would say wisely, but I would say that I just hope I’m not being lazy or sitting around and waiting for things to happen and instead trying to make sure the people in my life know I love them and that I’m doing things that matter.

One of my favorite songs of all time is Heart’s Cry by Steven Curtis Chapman, and there’s a line in it that goes like this:

This is my heart’s cry – to stand before the Father one day and hear Him say well done – this is my heart’s cry.

We don’t have a lot of time on this earth, and when I finally meet my maker I hope to stand before Him and know that I did well with the time He gave me. That I was a good father, a good husband, and a good friend. That we trained up our children in the way they should go, such that as they grow old they will not depart from Him. The scene in this week’s image, that of a path going into the distance on a snowy morning, to me represents both the mistakes of the past and the promise of the future, and while the way might be blurry at times we are never far from the love of Christ. The same Christ whose birth, and life, and death, and resurrection, we celebrate at Christmas and throughout the year.

So while this picture represents the end of one year it also, hopefully, shows the beginning of a new one as well. And while we can’t ever be sure of what the future will hold, we can do our best with the time we have right this very moment. So do what you can to make this day count.

As a bit of a postscript, I will say that my sister lost her three-year battle with breast cancer this past March. You can view my eulogy for her at the link below, and if you or anyone you might know would find a sense of comfort in the message please feel free to share it.

 

Lately I’ve been return to my roots a bit, photographically speaking, and doing a bit more shooting with my D7100 + 50mm lens and honestly, it’s been really really nice. As much as I like my Fuji X100F (and you know I like that camera!) there’s something about going back to where it all started and using my crop-sensor camera and the first lens I ever bought. The very same lens, in fact, that got me to start this Weekly Fifty blog way back in the spring of 2013.

When one of my friends from work suggested I bring my camera to get a picture of some of the monarch butterflies that were alighting on the flowers in the garden in front of the Student Union, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get a classic 50mm shot. Due to their sheer size these butterflies make good photography subjects since you don’t have get in super duper close like you might with smaller creatures. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get a shot like this one earlier in the year due to the time of day and different lighting conditions, but I figured I would at least be able to capture something interesting and colorful nonetheless.

After a few shots at f/4 I decided to go all-in and leave my aperture firmly at f/1.8 because…well, why not. Depth of field at f/1.8 is so unwieldy I knew I would likely get shots that were slightly out of focus, but I really wanted to focus the viewer’s attention firmly on any butterflies I was photographing which called for a super wide aperture despite the issues that situation sometimes causes. I got plenty of images I liked, and sure enough several were front- or back-focused, but this one was one of my favorites because of all the color as well as the interesting foreground element. Which was, I might add, an intentional compositional choice on my part. I specifically shot this with those two branches in between my camera and the butterfly to create a sense of depth and perspective that just wasn’t present in most of my other pictures. It turned out pretty well focused too, and even zoomed in all the way you’ll notice that the butterfly is nice and sharp right where it counts.