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

Here we have yet another in the long line of pictures I’ve taken which was directly inspired by my cousin Beth, who often posts close-up photos of flowers to her Instagram feed. Go ahead and follow her–you’ll be glad you did, and I’m sure you will see where I’ve gotten some ideas for my own pictures over the years :) I forget exactly which picture she posted that led to me taking this one, but sometimes it’s the idea of going out and taking pictures more than an individual photo that really gets to me. Occasionally I need a little mental nudge to get my camera out of my bag and go out and shoot some pictures, which is what I really like about using software like Instagram, Flickr, and even Facebook. Seeing what other people post helps give me ideas for my own photography, which can be a really col thing.

This picture is, as I have learned over the years, a class Simon Flower Photo: subject is off-center, viewing angle is slightly off to one side, the center is sharp, and there is a bit of context in both the foreground and background to give the subject a sense of depth and perspective. These particular compositional choices have come to define my particular style when it comes to taking pictures like this, and I like the idea of iterating, and improving, on these traits. I of course also used my close-up filters to get this shot starting with a +4 and then a +10. I didn’t like the results I was getting from the latter so I went with an image taken with the former, and even though I thought shooting at f/8 would result in an image that had too wide of a depth of field, it turned out to be not the case at all. In fact the shots I took at f/4 and f/2.8 had a depth of field that was so shallow it was a muddy purple mess, hence the f/8 shot you see here.

Something about the colors in this photo is a little off to me, and I’m not quite sure what’s causing it or what to do about it. The whole image seems to have somewhat of a yellow tint to it, but adjusting the white balance and overall tint (in the Basic panel of the Lightroom Develop module) didn’t really help. Maybe it had something to do with the time of day at which this was taken, or maybe even the close-up filter causing some type of aberration with the incoming light. It almost looks like this picture was sent through some kind of Instagram filter but I can assure you that’s not the case :) I almost didn’t post this picture because of the weirdness with the colors, but then figured I’d take the same as Spike from Cowboy Bebop: whatever happens, happens. This is how the picture turned out, so I might as well use it. And you know what? I kind of like it.

So this is a different sort of take on the traditional picture of a flower, and it’s an idea that came to me while I was eating breakfast with my kids one morning in March. My son brought home a carnation from school about a week prior to this picture as some sort of fund raiser where students could support the PTA (or other such organization) by buying a flower and having it delivered to a friend. He was thrilled with the flower and my wife found a nice simple vase to hold it, and it had been sitting on the window sill for several days afterwards. My wife called it “The Little Carnation that Could” because it just kept hanging in there long after we would have predicted its demise, and I thought it would make an interesting photo opportunity.

The trick, though, was in figuring out how to photograph a flower against a window and make the resulting image look interesting while also not being too over- or under-exposed. I thought about a couple different compositions before settling on what you see here, which was taken just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. I don’t often take pictures that exclusively feature shadows, and the idea of taking a bright pink carnation and reducing it to nothing more than a black-and-white silhouette seemed anathema to me and yet I quite like the result. It’s a different sort of way of looking at something familiar.

If the image appears somber, sad, introspective, or even depressing I promise you that’s not my intention at all. Take from it what you will, but before and after I shot this photo I was helping my two boys (ages 5 and 3) pour cereal and get dressed for school, and much of that involved the typical sorts of goofing around and odd noises one might expect on any given morning with kids that age :) The resulting image is a bit unique in my collection of photographs and I am happy with how it turned out, even though it takes a rather bright and cheerful flower-by-the-window scene and turns it into something else entirely. I guess that could be a statement about the power of photography, but for me it was really just about experimentation and trying something new. And I think it worked :)

I don’t normally post links to my podcast, Camera Dads, here on Weekly Fifty but I wanted to make an exception this time because I thought the content of our most recent episode would be interesting for those of you who read this blog. In it my brother Phil and I discuss the virtues and vices of sharing photos, particularly those of our children, on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and others. We talk about issues that a lot of parents face when deciding what to share (or not share) and even if you don’t have kids hopefully you will find our discussion to be interesting.

Camera Dads Episode 4: The Social Media Dilemma

Thank you, and if you have any comments we’d love to hear what you think!

Most of the pictures I’ve been posting here lately have come about through sheer happenstance and are the result of some kind of serendipity, good timing, or even just random task…er…chance.. Not this one, though. I specifically set out to take the picture you see here, not because it was especially artistic but because it has a degree of personal meaning and significance. So, of course, there’s a bit of a story to be told as well :)

Years ago when we moved in to our house one of the existing accoutrements in the back yard was that of a couple of bird houses. Not knowing anything about feeding our little avian friends, my wife and I just let them sit attached to the fence where they remain to this day, and each Spring a pair of little birds (I have no idea what kind) makes a nest in each small little wooden dwelling. This year I wanted to try something new so I found some plans online for making bird houses of our own. My boys, ages 5 and 3, thought this would be a cool idea and it also gave me a chance to use some power tools which is always a good thing. I searched many websites and finally found these simple plans for a Blue Jay house which I tweaked a little to fit my own preferences and materials.

Originally my boys and I made a house based on those plans but using some spare pickets that have been sitting in the corner of our yard ever since we bought the house. Though the lumber wasn’t decaying, it was rather brittle and we soon realized that it was not at all suited for any type of construction because it simply split apart whenever we drove screws into it. Even with pilot holes. Yeah…not good. So we went to the hardware store and got some 6′ by 5 1/2″ fence pickets for about $1.60 each, a box of 1 5/8″ deck screws (the self-tapping kind which don’t need pilot holes. Whee!) and set to work to make what you see in this picture.

It took another few prototypes before we got comfortable with the final product, and our kids were really happy with how things turned out. We tried spray painting one of the prototypes so we could decorate it, but that proved to be somewhat of a fruitless endeavor because the wood soaked up so much paint that multiple coats would be required after which my finger really got sore from pressing the nozzle on the paint can :) For these two bird houses, our boys just got out some crayons and made drawings on all sides which is what you’re seeing in the picture. According to my oldest son the illustration here is a rainbow, and I thought it would make for a fun picture that would recall some special memories long after the wood decays and the color fades away.

Ever since my boys were little I’ve tried to involve them in handyman projects, from replacing outlets to painting walls to cutting down trees. I don’t let them use some of the bigger tools in my garage like my table saw or miter saw, but they do enjoy getting their hands dirty with other tools like my drill and sander, and then cleaning things off with the air compressor. Hopefully projects like these bird houses will help show them that they can use their own two hands to create objects that are beautiful, functional, and help others–even if it’s just our small little feathered friends. Now all we need is a blue canary to inhabit these things. Maybe I can find one in the outlet by the light switch.

Sometimes it’s the familiar things in life that would make such good photos, if only we weren’t so used to seeing them on a daily basis. Such is often the case with me as I walk around my home, my neighborhood, or even the OSU campus where I work and one thing I try to do to combat the overwhelming sense that there’s nothing interesting to photograph is to force myself to take a picture of something. That’s kind of what happened here because normally this building, part of the Noble Research Center, is something I would just pass by and about which I wouldn’t really give a second thought. I mean…it’s just a building. What would possibly make it an interesting photograph?

The answer to that depends on whether you even accept the premise of the question that it is an interesting photograph in the first place. It might be, or you might not like it at all. Either way I promise you I intentionally used several photographic techniques here to get this specific shot and I’d like to share them with you. So here we go :)

While it’s true that this is, on one hand, a rather unremarkable brick-and-mortar structure, it’s the four columns on top that make it stand out as something more. I don’t even know what they are, since this certainly is not a factory or coal-burning power plant. My guess is they help draw away fumes or gases from the labs housed in the NRC but whatever they are, they sure do look interesting. I knew I wanted them in the shot, but as longtime readers might know I also had to get some context in there too. I shot this with my D7100 so I was working with the limitations of a crop-sensor camera, and decided that I wanted to shoot the building from an angle because it was much more interesting to see it receding back into the bottom-right corner of the frame as opposed to a picture from the side or front. I think the angle helped add a bit of dimensionality to what might otherwise be a rather dull photo.

I also wanted the structure to feel somewhat imposing, so I retreated as far back as I could while still maintaining a sense of scale. If I moved back much father, other objects like trees and neighboring buildings started to creep into the sides of the image, which tended to draw the viewer’s focus away from the pillars. One of my ideas here was to make the building seem taller and larger than it actually is in real life, which was done (I hope, anyway) through the use of composition alone. By moving myself and positioning my camera to get this photo with its receding lines and vertical pillars I hope I have given you, the viewer, the idea that this might be something more than it actually is.

Spoiler alert: it’s the middle building in this Google Maps 3D view.

In the end I’m not sure if this is a picture I would necessarily call interesting, special, or noteworthy in any way but it was fun to experiment a little and, if nothing else, I got my camera out of my bag and in my hands which is always a good thing :)