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

This is the first in a series of long-exposure sunset photo I’m going to share with you, all of which were taken in June of 2019 at Milford Lake, Kansas. Each year since 2012 our family has spent a few days at a resort on what is, apparently, one of the largest lakes in Kansas and it has yielded some really nice photo opportunities in the past. This year I wanted to try something a bit different and do some long exposures, which were only made possible thanks to the purchase of a cable-release for my Fuij X100F. It’s a simple, no-frills piece of gear I had been thinking about buying for quite some time, and I’m so glad I finally got one. I don’t see myself using it every day, but it sure was fun to see the creative possibilities it unlocked when shooting long exposures.

This was shot on the evening of June 22, and earlier in the day my kids, some of their cousins, and I came across this scene while out walking around:

What you might not know from looking at this is that there should not be any water here at all. When we visited the resort this year the lake was at almost-historic levels, and everything in this picture used to be either dry ground or a parking lot. In fact if you look really closely you can see, just to the right of the tree, a metal railing leading downward alongside what used to be a staircase. So yeah, it was kind of an interesting year at the lake.

When I saw this scene with a tree in the middle of what looked like a lake I thought it would make for an interesting picture, so I returned that evening as the sun was setting and tried to capture in my camera what I was seeing in my mind. Calculating exposures when shooting in Bulb Mode is a little tricky, but I started by setting my aperture at f/16, activating the three-stop ND filter in my camera, and metering the scene based on a 30-second exposure. When that was showing about one stop of underexposure I switched to Bulb mode and left the shutter open for 77 seconds, which smoothed out any motion in the water along with giving the sky a bit of a painted feel, with clouds showing a bit of a wispy look. The slight breeze also gave the tree leaves a bit of a blur which I didn’t like too much, but it’s not nearly as bad in this shot as it was in some of the others I got.

All in all I had a lot of fun taking this picture, and it set the stage for two more long-exposure images that I would go on to capture over the next two nights.

I was out in my backyard with my youngest son one day earlier this year when we both noticed a large patch of very small strawberries that had appeared almost overnight. Ever since we moved in to our house here in Oklahoma we have had wild strawberries show up at roughly the same time each year, in roughly the same location, but I’ve never thought to photograph them or really notice them much at all. But it’s interesting what comes to mind when you’re with a child, and seeing the world through their eyes can help open yours a little larger to take in things you never previously considered.

Once again, as in last week’s photo, it was my Nikon D750 and 50mm lens, along with some close-up filters, that allowed me to get this image. I forget which filter I used here but it might have been the +10 again, which is one that I have traditionally not liked all that well compared to the +4. And yet, here we are :) It’s difficult to tell from the photo but this particular strawberry was about 1cm in diameter and I really liked how it was nestled in between green leaves and yellow flowers. I shot some other images where strawberries were on their own or paired with just greenery, but this one felt like I was peeking into a hidden world of sorts.

This shot, and the one from last week, were fun reminders that sometimes you need to go back to basics as a way to reset yourself. I’ve got a collection of cameras and lenses I’ve acquired over the years but it’s nice to go back to the classic 50mm lens to get shots that really are special.

Once again I have my friend Gina to thank for this photo, who has given me several other picture ideas over the years and whose input I always appreciate having when it comes to photography. With all the rain we had this past spring there were all sorts of animals around that we don’t normally see, or perhaps just don’t notice, especially the creepy crawly variety. As we were chatting at work one soggy morning in May she asked if I had my camera with me and suggested that I go out and take some pictures of snails that were hanging around on a particular sidewalk near our building. I didn’t, but I thanked her for the suggestion and the very next morning I showed up with my Nikon D750, 50mm lens, and (you know it) my set of close-up filters to see what I could find.

Sure enough, I soon found a whole rout of snails so I got out my camera, attached the +10 filter, and set to work. The first thing I realized is that height was definitely going to be an issue: my camera was too far off the ground to get a really good look at any of the snails head-on! I would have liked to get some shots that were more at eye level, but that wasn’t really an option given the equipment and time I was working with, so I made the most of the situation anyway. I don’t normally use my +10 filter because it’s just too close for most situations I encounter, but it proved quite adept at capturing pictures of snails. I was able to get really close to this one, and others, and shot with a fairly small aperture of f/8 to get a wide enough depth of field so you could actually see what was going on. And even then, as you can see in the picture, the total in-focus area was only as wide as a few grains of sand! Thankfully these snails moved really slow or else it would have been a total wash.

At one point I went so far as to pick up one of the snails, set it on a leaf a few inches off the ground, and wait for it to come back out of its shell for a photograph. Sadly it did not oblige, though I can certainly understand its trepidation, and the best I could get in that scenario was a picture its shell sitting on the leaf:

While this picture was a little more colorful it was also a lot less lively, and in the end I decided I would rather have a photo that shows the actual snail and not just its portable abode. But who knows…one day maybe I’ll get a picture that does both :)

Contrary to last week’s image, this was one that definitely involved some thought and planning. My neighbors have a two-acre yard, part of which they let go untended and un-mowed because it ends up fostering a huge swath of yellow and red flowers, so after a rainstorm in mid-May I figured it would make a good setting for some pictures. I stopped on my way to work the next morning armed with my Classic Combination of a Nikon D750 and 50mm lens, and set about capturing a picture of red flowers surrounded by glistening grass.

I really did have this specific shot in mind when I set out with my camera that morning, and I was glad I could make my vision come to life pretty much how I planned. I shot this with the sun directly behind me just coming up over the horizon, which cast a nice even light over the whole scene. I also used a pretty wide aperture of f/1.8 which I normally tend to avoid, but gosh darnit, sometimes it’s fun to just open things up all the way and go for it. I knew I would be sacrificing a bit of sharpness and a few flower petals wouldn’t quite be in focus, but the tradeoff in terms of blur and subject isolation were worth it to me. I also liked how I was able to create a red horizontal blurry band of red flowers near the top of the picture, which was something I did no initially intend but really liked when I saw it.

My inspiration for this picture was a similar photo I took almost exactly one year prior, but I figured I wouldn’t get the same results with butterflies. And even though that assumption was correct, there are some things about this image I prefer over the original too. That’s the fun part about photography: you get the opportunity to revisit your creations and learn from them, and hopefully improve your images over time :)

It’s been a rough couple of months here in the Midwest, and hopefully by the time you read this the sun will be shining and the waters will have receded a bit! We capped a chilly winter with a very wet and rainy spring that saw rivers well over their banks, lakes swelling, and farmland inundated with more water than it could handle. The day after I took this image we got yet another all-night downpour and Theta Pond, which was right behind me as I shot the picture, was more like Theta Reservoir and a little waterfall was pouring onto University Avenue because of it. And thus the name of the picture reflects the conditions in which it was shot, which was an abnormally sunny day in the midst of lots of cloudy ones.

My inspiration for this photo was a few images that I recently posted which I took with my niece when she was in town. It’s weird how the simple act of going out to take photos of flowers can be so soothing, and a good way to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life. There’s flowers all around, especially at this time of year, and yet how many times have I thought to myself “There’s nothing to take pictures of?” (Answer: way too many times.) So I figured I would do just that, and it was a nice way to slow down for a bit which also resulted in a cool photo.

As is normal for me when I use my X100F I shot this in JPEG and used the Velvia film simulation so I wouldn’t have to do a lot of RAW editing. I shot wide open at f/2.0 to get a bit of foreground/background separation, and I think (though I’m not exactly sure) I used the electronic shutter so I could get a proper exposure despite shooting wide open. I used to activate the ND filter for situations like this, but that often slowed down the focusing so I’ve been using the electronic shutter instead and for the most part it works quite well, especially outdoors.