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

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 :)

Sometimes you never know what you’re gonna get, whether you’re eating a box of chocolates or going out for a quick walk with your camera. In fact I think by this point I should probably consider changing the name of this site from “Weekly Fifty” to “Five Minute Walks Around Theta Pond” since that seems to be where so many of these pictures come from. I took this on a particularly pleasant afternoon in February when the weather was in the mid 60’s, and it was one of those times that seems as though it’s tailor-made for snapping a few pictures. Armed with my D7100, 50mm lens, and a few close-up filters I was determined to get a few good shots while the sun was shining.

After a few minutes of walking, which also included a couple pictures of some yellow flowers I might post here in the coming weeks, I saw this purple…um…something-or-other. Perhaps it’s a tulip? No, that’s not right. A lily? I honestly have no idea. To me it looked like the monster in the sarlacc pit in the special edition of Return of the Jedi. (A version I own, have seen, but refuse to watch anymore due to the inclusion of the heinous Jedi Rocks scene in Jabba’s palace. #maxreboband #sysnootles #neverforget #despecializedtrilogyftw.) Whatever it was, I wanted to get a picture so there were a few things to think about:

• Regular 50mm lens, or filter?

• What angle do I shoot from?

• What do I focus on?

• What aperture do I use to get the desired depth of field and sharpness?

• What do I want in the foreground and background for context?

On a shot like this shutter speed and ISO are mostly irrelevant because there is so much light, but it was still a lot to consider in just a few seconds of time. I knew I wanted the viewer’s attention to be drawn to the bright purple flower but if I shot it straight on it would lose a sense of depth and context. However if I stood too far to the side the leaves would get in the way. I chose this particular composition because it not only contains a bit of foreground and background elements, but also another flower on the side to add a bit of additional color to the scene and make the central flower feel less isolated.

I used my +4 filter at f/4 (seriously, the 50mm lens, +4 filter, at f/4 is magical. Give this combination a try if you are able to.) and got a picture that was almost exactly what I was hoping for, which isn’t always the case when I go out shooting. I’m super pleased with how sharp everything turned out, and if you pixel peep at 100% you’ll even notice little drops of condensation on the leaf at the bottom of the frame. Sometimes when I shoot subjects close up I find myself having to use live view to get the focus right, but this was either using the in-viewfinder autofocus or me just focusing manually. I honestly don’t remember but either way I like the result and I hope you do too :)

Every now and then when I make it back to Nebraska I like to take a route that’s a bit slower than the interstate. Maybe I’m old, or maybe I just like looking for photo opportunities, but when I was younger I took the Ian Malcolm approach of “must go faster.” Nowadays I like to go with a journey-is-the-reward approach and take my sweet time, and one of my favorite roads to travel is Highway 77 which winds north through Kansas among lots of small towns and even a few lakes. It’s not the quickest route but I think it’s only about 20 minutes shorter than Interstate 35, though that’s if you don’t get stuck behind a John Deere tractor along the way :)

When I was up north (which, to an Oklahoman, means some place like Nebraska) several weeks ago I once again drove-slash-ambled along 77 on the way there as well as the return trip, except on the way back home I left town at 6:30am so I could still have some time with my wife and our kids before the little ones went to bed. As I watched the sky change from inky black to burnt orange over the course of the first hour of my trip I kept wanting to stop to take pictures of the wee hours before sunrise, but nothing was really working out how I wanted it to. (I also didn’t want to dilly-dally too much or else I’d be wasting my early rise.) Trees obscured the horizon, buildings and power lines ended up jutting through the frame, and as the sky got lighter and lighter my chances got slimmer and slimmer. I was just south of Beatrice, right about here in fact, when I saw the sun juuuust starting to peek over the horizon in front of me and knew that this was my chance. I quickly pulled off the road, grabbed my D750 + 50mm lens, and ran off to the side of my car to snap a few frames. I shot several at f/8 and a couple more at f/11, all while maintaining an ISO of 100 in order to get the richest colors possible, and in the space of about a minute and a half I was able to get a few that I liked before the sun rose too high and ruined the moment.

It was a bit of a tricky situation for one reason, really: composition. I didn’t want the sun to be in the center because those shots (imho) are a little boring, but I didn’t want it too far off to the side or it would seem weird. I also looked for some other elements to feature in the frame but wasn’t sure how high or low to place the horizon itself. What I’ve ended up with is a near textbook example of the efficacy of the Rule of Thirds: the horizon, the sun, the radio tower…it’s just about as Rule of Thirds-ey as you can get. And to be honest, that’s not a bad thing. Sure you can always try new things and break the old conventions to get interesting and exciting shots, but with just a minute to get the shot I went with the same old tried-and-true compositional method that always just gets the job done. This shot won’t win any awards but I like it, and as I’ve mentioned here before, that’s really all that matters to me :)