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

Working on a college campus is nice for so many reasons, and one of my favorites is how things always seem to be in a state of flux. Visit a campus at any time of the year and things are likely to be quite different from the previous time you were there. In the fall the whole place is buzzing with excitement and anticipation; in the spring students are anxious and eager for graduation; in the summer you are likely to hear sounds of marching bands practicing, sports teams playing, or the steady rhythm and honking of construction equipment moving earth and pounding steel. However one of the most interesting periods is that time when fall semester ends but spring semester has not yet begun. Traffic is light, students are sparse, and staff are busy finalizing documents and preparing for spring while professors huddle in their offices trying to finish up grades or hammer out the finishing touches on a research paper.

It was during that time when I went out on a chilly afternoon with my D750 + 50mm lens combination for (you guessed it!) a quick walk around Theta Pond, determined to get a few pictures of…something. I wasn’t quite sure really, but given that the sky was overcast and the students were gone I thought I might as well try and get a picture just to keep the creative juices flowing. I came back with several, which may or may not show up here on the blog in the coming weeks, but one stood out to me for a reason that I did not expect. It was two cypress knees nestled in a bed of brown needles, and it seemed very much like two people offering comfort to one another on this chilly December day. Something about the image really hit home but I was also bothered by the composition since I was not quite happy with the background and, since I shot the original at f/1.8, the two roots which formed the subject of the picture were not in focus due to a crazy shallow depth of field. In short the photo was good, but a few steps away from one that I really liked.

To remedy the situation I grabbed my buddy who works down the hall and the two of us went back to Theta Pond with the sole purpose of taking a picture of the cypress knees, but done properly. I knew exactly what I had in mind and had a much better sense of the exposure settings I would need, and the result is what you see here. To me it looks like a scene of sorrow, and while I don’t intend to bring anyone down by reading this, that’s just how it comes across to me. It’s a wife being comforted by her husband, with a small crowd of mourners and sympathizers (most likely friends and family) in the background who are there to offer support but know that this couple needs a minute to themselves. I don’t know why the couple is sad, and I’m not sure if they are looking towards the camera or away from it, but I like the intimacy of the picture and the sense of comfort it conveys. Well, to me anyway, but your own interpretation might vary.

I wavered a long time between posting the f/2.8 and f/4 versions of this photo but eventually settled on the former. This meant that there is just a slightly smaller depth of field than I would prefer, and as a result the foremost part of the shorter root is not quite in focus, but the tradeoff is a higher degree of background blur which helps separate the subjects from everything else. Often I find myself taking pictures of something that looks fun, interesting, or even just a bit artsy but this particular image meant something (or illustrated something) that was a bit more than just a pretty-looking picture of nature. I don’t know if it does the same for you, but I hope you at least enjoy it :)

This isn’t a traditional Weekly Fifty post, but kind of a public service announcement letting you know about a new show I’m doing with my brother Phil. (Perhaps you could say it’s an advertisement? Except I’m not selling anything!) It’s a monthly video, also available as an audio podcast, where he and I talk about a particular camera-related topic. Both of us are fathers, and both of us enjoy photography, so we thought we would put our heads together and do a show involving both of these elements of our lives:

Camera Dads

One thing we want to do is make input from the community a part of our show, and on the right-hand side of the website you’ll see the topic that we are going to discuss on our next show along with a way for you to provide input. If you have anything you’d like to say, or questions to ask, about the upcoming topic we’d love to hear from you! And of course if you’d like to leave us a comment on the current show we always welcome those too.

Thank you!

I shot this photo after work in November 2016 while walking to my car (not my bike. it was chilly that day!) and happened to see a patch of colorful leaves on the ground which looked like it could make for a halfway decent photo opportunity. And really, that’s about all this is. It’s a picture I would consider not especially good, but halfway decent. I like it but wouldn’t frame it, and I think it’s OK but could be better. So why am I posting it here on Weekly Fifty? Because this picture represents what my blog is all about: growth, progress, and forcing me to keep taking pictures even if I don’t think they will be all that noteworthy.

However…

The more I look at this image the more I actually do think it bears a little closer examination especially due to the shallow depth of field which resulted from shooting a close subject (the curled leaf in the center) at a wide aperture of f/1.8. As I have said repeatedly here on this blog I generally don’t like shooting wide open especially with close subjects because the depth of field goes from an interesting compositional choice to a blurry distraction, but I actually think it works quite well here for one reason: it creates a sense of motion. Even though there was virtually no wind when I took the picture, the blurred foreground and background combined with the bent and twisted nature of the various leaves and grasses imparts a sense of kinetic energy into the picture which I kind of like. Then again, perhaps this is all just in my mind and I’m imagining something where nothing actually exists, but when I look at the picture now it’s hard for me to not envision leaves actually swirling around like you might see on a crisp autumn day.

I’ve noticed a theme developing with some of the pictures I take when out walking around, often on campus during a short break, which is less about the types of images I’m recording with my camera and more about the way in which I find them. This picture is the most recent example but I’ve seen it plenty of other times too, and the idea is that I often find photographic opportunities on the latter part of a walk. And I’m not talking some kind of milti-mile hike here, but just a short 5-minute walk around Theta Pond on the OSU campus. During the first few minutes I often look for picture opportunities but, and it’s weird how often this happens, I don’t usually find any. I end up just walking around looking at the trees, flowers, ducks, squirrels, and taking it all in for a little while. (Which, I might add, is one of the nice parts about working on a college campus.) I often snap some pictures here and there but rarely does anything strike me as interesting, creative, or…good.

However near the end of one of these walks as I get close to my building I have often found myself noticing more than I did at the outset, and this is when I get the shots I’m most happy with. This week’s picture, for instance, was taken just across the street from my building after I had walked around the pond and was headed back to my office. I saw a cluster of short, thick grass by the edge of a sidewalk and realized it would make an interesting picture. I crouched down low with my D7100 and a +4 filter attached to the 50mm lens and took a few photos with the grass severely backlit by the overhead sun, and was super happy with the result.

I think what’s happening here is that during the first part of one of these 5-minute walks my brain is just starting to clear itself from the tasks on which I have been concentrating and I find myself less open to artistic or creative forms of expression. After a little while of ambling around and just being a part of nature I think my mind starts to reset itself and by the end I am much more likely to see subjects, colors, and details that I had entirely missed at the outset. Of course all this is anecdotal and a conclusion cannot be drawn from just one person’s experience, but it does make me wonder about whether this is a legitimate phenomenon.

So my advice to you, readers of this blog, is the next time you feel yourself eagerly searching for a photo opportunity but coming up empty-handed, put your camera away and just exist for a little while–outdoors in nature if at all possible. Let your mind relax, wander, and soak in the sights around you and then pick up your camera and see what you can find. I can’t say it will work for sure, but I do think it might and I’d be eager to hear your thoughts about all this in the comments below :)

This image is quite a departure from the close-up shots I was posting during the final months of 2016, and it’s been kind of fun to take those filters out of my bag and force myself to sue my 50mm lens as just a plain ol’ lens once again without any additional modifications. I shot this with my D7100 when I spotted the vehicle while biking through campus on the way to work a little while ago and really liked how the morning sun was casting such a nice glow on the car while keeping the whole scene overall somewhat subdued. I tried to keep in mind a few things I learned when taking this shot of a Tesla Model S but ran into a couple of issues that made this a little different.

1. Lighting…or the fact that there simply wasn’t much. It meant I had to shoot at f/1.8 which I normally don’t do, but it worked out fine here since I needed a shallow depth of field for the type of shot I was going for.

2. Crop vs. Full Frame. I shot the Tesla with my D750 which meant that I could get much closer to the vehicle and, as a result, get a shallower depth of field. I shot this off road racer with my D7100 so I had to stand back a bit farther in order to fit the whole thing in the frame so my DOF was a little wider.

3. Shooting position. I tried using the viewfinder to get this shot but ended up literally laying down on the ground and shooting in Live View. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

4. Camera shake. Since the lighting was so dim I had to use a slow shutter speed which meant the image was most likely going to be blurry. I wanted to keep the ISO low (I used 200) because I knew I would be doing a lot of editing in Lightroom, and I also dialed in -2EV for exposure compensation so the overall scene would be a bit dark but the highlights would be properly exposed. This allowed me to raise the exposure and bring out details in the shadows while maintaining the integrity of the bright spots on the car.

I used a 2-second timer and set my camera to take 3 shots with half-second intervals because I figured that would increase my chances of getting a blur-free image. And for the most part it worked, though if you zoom in super close you’ll notice that the lettering on the car is just a bit blurry. Oops :) I ended up with an exposure of 50mm, f/1.8, 1/6 second, ISO 200 and it really was just dumb luck that the shot turned out as clear as it did.

My editing on this image was a bit more heavy-handed than usual, and you can see the original here:

I purposely kept the door in the frame because I liked the sense of context it added, and went so far as to remove the two signs behind the car (albeit in Lightroom, not Photoshop, because I didn’t really care enough to do a pixel-perfect job on the Reserved Parking sign) which I normally avoid altogether. All in all this was a fun image to take and edit, and who knows…maybe one day I’ll get to see this car actually driving around instead of just sitting there :)