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

The hum and rhythm of cicadas is a noise that used to bother me when I was a kid, but now is such a part of autumn life that I kind of miss it if it’s not there in the evenings. However, while the sound of these aural insects is not hard to miss it’s the bugs themselves which can sometimes be a bit more elusive. It’s not uncommon to find evidence of their presence on trees, bushes, and the sides of buildings but for some reason I don’t actually see the cicadas themselves very often if ever. It was because of this that I didn’t really think much of the subject of this photo when I walked past a bush across the street from my building at OSU, and almost missed a good photo opportunity in the process.

When I saw this little guy hanging out in the late afternoon sunshine I thought it was just another outer shell but, because it was so large, I thought I might as well take a picture of it anyway. When I got back to my office I grabbed my D200, 50mm lens, and set of close-up filters and walked back across the street (along with two friends from my office who just happened to be going in the same direction) to snap a photo or two. As soon as we got to the cicada shell one of them pointed out that it was, in fact, not a shell at all but a living cicada still very much ensconced in his existing exoskeleton.

Thankfully this cicada wasn’t too interested in moving around, and didn’t seem to mind that I was shoving a giant camera in his face, so I was able to spend a few minutes moving around and changing close-up filters to get just the shot I was looking for. I initially shot with my +10 filter at f/8 (and ISO 200, all the while being thankful for good light since the D200 is pretty bad at ISO 800 or higher) and got some shots that, while kind of neat, were honestly just a bit too close to be interesting. Soon I switched to my +4 filter at f/4 and took several shots like the one you see here, but from different angles and knowing I would likely need to crop in a bit.

While I was photographing I started to get a little frustrated with one of the limitations of this old camera, in that there are only 11 autofocus points. I really wanted to nail focus on the eye, but focus-and-recompose is out of the question when working at such close distances because the depth of field is so shallow. If I was using my D7100 or D750 I could have just selected an AF point that was right on top of the eye but on my D200 when I did that same thing it invariably resulted in a poor overall composition which was why the ending shot needed to be cropped a bit more than I would have liked.

In the end I was thrilled to get to see a cicada up close and get a decent shot of it too. As my wife said, “that bug has one ugly mug!” and I certainly agree with that assessment. If one landed on me I’d probably freak out and shoo it away as quickly as possible, but it was fun to spend a few minutes getting a close look at such a fascinatingly-designed insect.

When I was a kid I clearly remember my mom saying “Good morning sunshine!” to me and my siblings, particularly on school mornings when we would wander upstairs bleary-eyed and wishing we could go back to bed for just a few more minutes of sleep. That phrase has always stuck with me over the years and, come to think of it, I need to start saying it to my own two boys. Who knows…maybe they will remember it when they’re older too :)

On my bike ride home from work near the end of July I passed a couple sunflowers at the base of a hill near a retirement home, and made a mental note to return to the same spot the following morning in order to get a couple shots of the flowers as the sun was rising. It was kind of the same idea as last week’s photo, but this time it was entirely intentional and I clearly knew in advance where I wanted to go, what I wanted to photograph, and how I wanted the composition to look. Sort of. And I’ll get to that in a second.

First, for a bit of context, here’s the scene:

Not much to look at, right? I think that’s why I biked past this little grove so many times without really noticing anything. But if photography is taught me anything over the years, it’s that I really do need to slow down, look harder, and really see the picture opportunities right before my eyes. So that’s what I tried to do, and when I came back this way the very next morning I had a clear idea of what I wanted to capture, where the light would be coming from, what elements I wanted to use in the composition, etc.

I spent a few minutes wading through the tall grass taking pictures of the flower on the far right from a variety of angles, and I was specifically trying to get a picture with the flower on the left and the sky poking out through the trees in the background. Here’s my favorites from the shoot, as seen in my Lightroom library.

I eventually settled on #6 (you can see dim gray numbers behind the thumbnails) because I liked how the discrete elements of the composition came together to form a cohesive whole: the sky in the top-right corner, the bright yellow flower in the middle, and the green leaves behind it which created a nice sense of contrast as well. Originally I thought #5 was my image of choice but the more I looked at it the more I realized that the streak of blue sky blended in a bit too much with the yellow petals, whereas #6 created a much stronger composition and the green background really served to highlight the subject.

It was a fun exercise in finding a picture opportunity that was dulled just a bit when I got back on my bike and found my shorts and legs covered in hundreds of small little burs from the grass. I spent the rest of the day picking them off but it was a small price to pay for a picture I really liked :)

On the morning I shot this photo I was going through somewhat of a photographic slump. I think it was mostly due to the oppressive heat that was bearing down on Oklahoma through much of Summer 2017, and it was difficult to find the inspiration to get outside and shoot photos. I mean it, I barely even went outside at work which was a big contrast to other times of the year when I will often take a stroll around Theta Pond or head to the Student Union and back just to clear my mind. But boy howdy, after weeks of upper 90’s and low 100’s the thought of going on a walk was just not that appealing anymore. I was determined to find a way out of the picture-taking rut though, and even prayed about it on the morning I took this picture. Sure enough, as often happens when I submit things to the Lord, I found a couple of picture opportunities while biking to work that very morning.

The first was about a half mile from my house when I came across some flowers in a very small field right behind the strip mall I ride past each morning. I initially biked right on by and then stopped, turned around, and got down on my hands and knees with my D7100 to get a few shots of yellow petals poking up in the early morning. The shots were OK though nothing special, but I was glad I took the time to stop and at least try something. A few minutes later as I approached Boone Pickens Stadium on Hall of Fame avenue I decided to take a fairly innocuous detour and instead of taking my usual counterclockwise route around the perimeter of the colosseum I turned south at Gallagher-Iba Arena just because it would be different. And sure enough, it worked.

As I was riding south past the home of Cowboy Basketball I saw a row of cypress trees whose leaves were a mix of glowing green and deep brown, and the rich mix of colors in the morning light really was something special. At almost an other time of day the sunlight would have been too harsh to get a picture like this, but the sun just peeking over the horizon it bathed the whole scene in a warm glow that I don’t often associate with cypress trees. I debated for a little while about whether to use a close-up filter but decided not to in order to get a broader sense of context for the green leaves, and shot at f/2.8 instead of f/1.8 in order to get the subject a bit sharper with a wider depth of field.

Strangely, one of the trickiest parts of this shot was actually getting my camera to focus on the green leaves. Apparently it was small enough that my lens kept focusing on background elements instead of the green leaves in front, but eventually I got a shot that worked out fairly well. It was a good reminder that if I ever do get a little lost when it comes to photography ideas, a solution can present itself even if it lies just a hundred yards off the beaten path.

When I was a kid my dad was really into model trains, perhaps because he worked as a carman at Burlington Northern (now Burlington Northern Santa Fe) railroad, and I fondly remember the rather impressive H-O gauge set he built in the basement of our house in central Minnesota. When we moved to Nebraska in the early part of 1986 my parents bought a house that they still live in today, and its relatively modest size suited our rather large family quite well except when it came to having a model train set. There was simply no place to build one, given that every room in the house was occupied–that sort of thing tends to happen when you are raising five children under one room :)

My dad’s solution? Construct a 12′ x 12′ train set attached to cables and a winch so it can be raised into the ceiling. To this day I’m not sure how he actually did it, but if you go to my parents’ basement and look upwards you’ll see the underside of none other than the very same train set he built back when we were kids, just waiting to be lowered down and played with. It’s not much to look at compared to my uncle Ray and aunt Renee’s Nostalgia Trip set, but it’s still pretty neat.

My wife and I were back in Nebraska visiting my parents and other family members over Memorial Day this year and he had the set down on near the floor so some of the younger grandchildren could watch trains make their circuit around the tracks, and I grabbed my D7100 + 50mm lens to take a few shots of the models for posterity. This particular engine, which I clearly remember playing with when I was a kid, was still running and dutifully transporting H-O gauge cars around but I was able to catch it at a moment of rest when the operator on the other side of the set was momentarily distracted.

The light was dim so I needed to shoot somewhat wide open and use a shutter speed fast enough to eliminate the motion blur from hand-holding the camera, and even at f/2.8 I was only able to get a 1/60 second shutter. (And that was with the ISO clear up to 3200, which is a lot on that old D7100.) The result is a picture that does a decent job of capturing the fact that there’s a model train engine on some track, but I wish the depth of field was a bit wider to provide some context. It all happened in a matter of seconds though, and I didn’t want to tell the kids to stop having fun just so I could snap a few shots for my blog but it did make me want to revisit the scene (hopefully with a wider lens!) to capture a bit more of what makes this particular train set so unique.

Every year my family goes to Milford Lake in Kansas for a few days of playing on the beach, going on boat rides, and really just spending time with each other. As I was preparing for this year’s trip I had to decide what gear to bring, which is always a bit of a tricky proposition because I don’t want to get stuck in the trap of focusing more on my camera stuff than I am on my family, but I also didn’t want to leave anything at home that could be used to get some fun photos. In the end I might have actually gone a bit overboard with gear (isn’t that always the case?) but made sure that I wasn’t getting too distracted with picture-taking during the days we were at the lake. Sometimes I intentionally left my camera at the cabin so I wouldn’t be caught up in taking dozens of photos, and at other times I used my camera only for specific purposes and then put it away when I was done. I also brought out good old-fashioned pocket camera we’ve had for years, because sometimes all you need is something small and portable to capture the memories you want.

I’ve discovered over the years that while 50mm is a fantastic focal length in many situations, it’s not my preferred lens when I know I’m mostly going to be with and around family. For that I turn to something wider like my 35mm, and if I know I’m going to be away from the action I also bring along my 70-200. I did bring my 50mm lens on the trip specifically so I could take some photos for my Weekly Fifty blog, and it stayed on a shelf the entire time except for when I specifically went out with my brother Andy to capture some shots of lightning as a storm rolled through the area. At first I ran down to the beach near our cabins but soon realized that the surrounding trees and camping areas were obscuring most of the incoming clouds. When that wasn’t working out I went back to the cabin, found my big brother, and asked if he wanted to drive down to the boat launch and set up shop there to catch some lightning shots. He grabbed his camera gear and off we went, hoping to do the best with what we had.

Andy was better prepared than I, having a nice tripod and a remote shutter release whereas I had to borrow my dad’s tripod and use a 30-second timer. This gave Andy the ability to shoot in Bulb mode (basically opening the shutter for as long as he wanted to, and then clicking his remote shutter release again to close it) whereas my 30-second exposures had to be done over and over manually. It wasn’t a big problem though, and every time my 30 seconds was up I just clicked the shutter button again and sat there waiting.

In fact, it was the waiting and uncertainty which were the most difficult parts of getting this shot. We had no idea where the lightning would come from, where it would strike, or how much time we even had to work with before the rain started falling. Because of this a wider lens would have been good since it would have allowed more room for error, but I stuck with my Nifty Fifty just because I wanted to see what would happen. Turns out I got a shot that I really like, and I can honestly say it’s the best lightning picture I’ve ever taken. It did require some postprocessing (yay for shooting in RAW!) but after I brought out some of the colors in the clouds and in the background I was even more pleased with how the image turned out.

The one thing I don’t quite understand is why the trees on the lower-left corner have a bit of a white halo around them. It’s not anything I did in Photoshop, and if you look closely the trees on the lower-right have a similar type of glow. I did raise the shadows quite a bit in order to bring out some color in the sky, but I don’t think that was causing the halo effect. Rather I’m guessing it was the flash of light from the lightning bolt that provided some backlighting to the trees. Whatever caused it, I don’t really mind it except that it tends to look like a poor job of photoshopping which, I can fairly confidently say, is not the case.

If you like this shot I would encourage you to try this sort of thing on your own, and the next time you see a storm rolling in put your camera on a tripod and see what you can come up with :)