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

Ah, back to the classic setup of shooting with a 50mm lens and a set of close-up filters! I posted a ton of photos with this combination in recent years but since getting my X100F I haven’t thought about the good old close-up filters much, so when I awoke to a rainy morning in late April I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get them back out and take some pictures. And my oh my, was I ever reminded of how much I like doing macro-style shots.

One thing I’ve learned from working with close-up filters is that virtually any subject can make for a compelling picture, even bits of flotsam and jetsam you might have on your desk as you read this post. Look close enough at almost anything around you and you’ll start to see intricacies, patterns, and small details that transform the mundane into something magical. Combine that with a bit of precipitation and you’re good to go, which is exactly what happened for this week’s image.

This picture didn’t require anything special in the way of gear, but it did necessitate a bit of planning in order to get it right. I waited until the rain had abated somewhat so as not to drench my D7100 (I know it’s got some weather sealing but I’m still probably a bit too careful with it) and then found a tree with some water drops hanging off at various spots. This particular one was interesting because the bud right above the drop added just the right touch of color, and also because the reflection in the drop was pretty cool to look at :) I believe I kept my lens at f/8 to get a wider depth of field and, if memory serves me correctly (which it often doesn’t!) I think I shot this with my +4 filter though a +10 would have been interesting too. I focused manually because relying on electronic focus with shots like this is so tricky and often unreliable, and bracketed my shots in the hope of getting at least one that turned out OK.

I know I’ve been talking about the X100F a lot recently but taking this photo reminded me how much I enjoy doing this type of photography and helped me realize, yet again, that there is no such thing as the perfect camera. It’s all about what works for you, and what helps you get the shots you want on any given occasion. Maybe it’s a big DSLR, maybe it’s a point-and-shoot, and maybe it’s your cell phone. If it works, then go for it.

Another example of how photography, as Forrest Gump might have said, is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get. A few weeks ago I was walking past the School of Geology, as I’ve done many many times before, and happened to notice something strange about a little brick wall that I had seen before but never really thought much about. I paused and saw that there were openings on either side of it large enough for a person to pass through, so I stopped and took a short detour to check out what, if anything, was on the other side. What I saw wasn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things, but it was a nice little patio with kind of a mini arboretum, if you will, that I would imagine most people on campus (just like me) didn’t even know was there.

If you’re curious, click here and zoom in a bit on the School of Geology. The black rectangle where the sidewalk jutting out from the curved rode hits the other north/south sidewalk is right on the other side of this week’s picture. And ask yourself: would you ever think to look behind the wall? I sure didn’t!

When I first stumbled across this tiny oasis I had my X100F with me and took a few shots from about waist level, but they didn’t really look how I was hoping they would turn out. I returned the next day and took a couple more shots with my camera right on the ground and pointed upwards in order to capture the garden as well as a bit of sky, and got just the shot I was envisioning. And once again the 35mm focal length of that camera proves to be just about perfect for the type of shooting I like to do on a casual everyday basis.

I had to edit the sky just a bit to bring out some of the color (I used a gradient filter in Lightroom and then erased parts of it on the tree leaves using the filter brush with auto-masking enabled) and made a few other color adjustments, but the one thing I really wish I could get rid of is the…uhm…white markings on the wall. Let’s just say it’s not paint :) I suppose someone with a lot of time and Photoshop skills could remove those but I’m content to leave the image as-is and enjoy the story behind it of discovering a hidden gem right in front of me. And now that you know about it too, maybe you’ll check it out next time you’re at OSU :)

I spent my first few years at OSU working as kind of an all-in-one tech guy for the distance learning program at the Spears School of Business. I made videos, took photos, ran a/v equipment for conferences, and did tech support for our learning management system and made a lot of good friends in the process. Just as I was transitioning to another job on the other side of campus the Business School jump-started their plans to construct a new building and four years later, in the spring of 2018, it was finally completed. Classes were held in the new location starting in January of 2018 but it wasn’t until the middle of April that the building was officially declared “Open for Business” by Dean Eastman at a ceremony involving hundreds of alumni, staff, students, and donors.

Like most days I had my camera with me when I went to work that morning but didn’t really plan on getting a shot like this during the ceremony, and in fact through most of the speeches and video presentations I was standing on the north side under balcony trying to avoid getting rained on! Thankfully the storms just grazed Stillwater that afternoon and as the clouds were lifting and the events were starting to draw to a close I ran over to the middle of the second floor balcony, switched my Fuji X100F to RAW, and fired off a couple shots before heading back to join some of my friends where I had been standing. A few minutes later the program ended and everyone dispersed to see the new location.

Once I loaded this image up in Lightroom I was a little worried that I didn’t quite get what I was hoping for, mostly because the sky was kind of an overexposed horizontal patch of white. Thanks to the magic of RAW I was able to recover a huge amount of color information and, along with a couple other editing tweaks, ended up with the picture you see here. Sure a wider lens would have been nice like the 17-40mm that one of the Spears photographers used on these shots, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as portable and unobtrusive as my little X100F.

It was fun to get this shot and see the new home of my former workplace, and more importantly to spend time with so many good people who help make the OSU campus a great place to work :)

This was a fun opportunity to get out the 50mm lens with some close-up filters, and also an example of why it’s important to to look around you and see what’s happening so you don’t miss a shot if one presents itself. These flowers are about the size of a pencil eraser and they are on a tree that’s about 20 feet from my building at work, and I don’t think I would have taken much notice had circumstances not lined up just right. I went across campus one afternoon with a coworker who pointed out the super tiny but really pretty petals on this one particular tree, and I realized right away that this would be a fun photo opportunity with the right gear. The next morning I returned to work with my 50mm lens and +4 close-up filter in order to see if I could capture these flowers on film. (Digitally speaking, that is.)

As I walked around the tree looking for some shots there was a bit of an issue in that there were almost too many opportunities from which to choose. Flowers just like the one you see here were everywhere on this tree, which made things a little difficult because virtually any of them could have resulted in good pictures. I soon realized that despite having a thousand potential subjects, I had to really look close to find one that would actually work for a photo.

Getting this shot required looking at all elements within the frame: the subject, the lighting, the background, the aperture size, and even the direction that the flower was pointing. I ended up shooting almost straight into the sun which resulted in quite a lot of backlighting, but the tradeoff was a nice blurry background and a white backdrop for the pink flower in the center. Most of the other angles from which I tried taking pictures resulted in images that were too muddled, too bright, or too disjointed to really function as proper photographs.

The very next day when I walked up to my building I saw that most of these pink flowers were gone–they fell off, closed up, or turned a light shade of brown. I was able to get this picture in a relatively fleeting moment that won’t come around for another year, and when it does you can bet I’ll be there with my camera to see it :)

I took this not too long after shooting another photo of a similar flower, but I much prefer this image to the former which you can see if you scroll back a couple of weeks here on the blog. When these flowers open up in early Spring you don’t have much time before they whither away–maybe two days at the most–so when I brought my 85mm lens to campus I specifically sought out these flowers as photo subjects. Luckily I was able to get this image before I even got to work! I was biking past the east side of Low Library and saw one of these trees in full bloom with this particular flower right at eye level, and I really liked how it caught the morning light which made the colors have a richness to them that I don’t always see at other times of the day.

I shot this wide open at f/1.8 which can be a bit of a gamble on the Nikon 85mm lens since it’s a bit stronger and sharper at slightly smaller apertures, but I’m glad I went all the way on this because I really wanted to isolate the subject from the background. A smaller aperture might have resulted in a slightly sharper image but at the cost of some background blur which was a tradeoff I did not want to make.

More than anything I’m happy with how the compositional elements came together on this one. The flower is very close to (but doesn’t quite touch) the branch on the left, nor does it encroach on the purple flower in the background. It does overlap the green leaf behind it but that serves to make the purple stand out even more. I don’t know how well I actually planned those elements when I took the shot and though I wish I could take credit for all the stylistic elements of this picture I think simple luck might have been in play too :)