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

Every now and then you’ll read (or hear, if you listen to the audio commentary) one of these Weekly Fifty posts where I discuss the photographic opportunities that abound right in front of our eyes even in the simple mundane activities that make up our daily lives. Photo opportunities are all around us if we are willing to look for them, and this image is an illustration of what I mean when I say this sort of thing. To wit: it’s not an exceptional image in terms of the sheer artistry or composition, but it does serve as a bit of a visual reminder to me, and maybe even to you, that you don’t need fancy gear or special subjects to take good pictures.

I shot this about 6am in mid-April when I was getting dinner ready before the rest of my family woke up. My wife and I are big fans of slow cooker dinners, and we will often get supper ready many hours in advance so we can just sit down with the kids for family meal time without having to prepare anything right in the moment. On this particular morning I had just finished cutting up a pepper and some onions and was in the middle of slicing this tomato when I thought of using it for a bit of an impromptu photo-op. I ran to fetch my camera (this time my D7100 + 50mm lens) made three images, all at f/1.8 about ISO 1100 (it varied slightly between each shot) and went back to dinner prep. The whole thing took about 40 seconds from the time I put down the knife to the time I picked it back up, and when it was done I felt like I had a cool little image of a sliced tomato while also learning something along the way.

This brief photo session also served as an object lesson in providing a bit of context to a given photo. The first two pictures I shot were just of the tomato itself, and then I realized that this by itself would not be sufficient. The scene was lacking something, and I soon realized what it was: the knife itself which was used to slice the tomato. See for yourself in this photo which was right before I put the knife in the frame:

This would be a perfectly serviceable photo if it was the final product, but it’s not. I didn’t make a sliced tomato for dinner, and as such this photo feels incomplete and a bit empty. After I realized this I quickly grabbed the knife I was using to slice it, put it in the foreground, and took the third and final picture which is much more well-rounded and interesting than this one. I also made sure to include the small chunk of tomato on the right-hand side in the final image as well, as it adds a dynamic element to the image–it helps tell a story that there was more to this photo than what you see, and clearly there is still more work to be done on this round red fruit. Or vegetable. Or however it’s classified.

I now realize that I have written over 500 words on a sliced tomato, which is about 450 more than a photo like this needs. My point, though, is that you really can turn just about anything into a picture. You just have to look a little harder and, of course, make sure you have your camera with you :)

By the way, the recipe I was making is Slow Cooker Pork and Rice:
Place in slow cooker:
2 or 3 Pork Steaks (not pork chops)
2 medium onions, chopped (it seems like a lot, but it’s fine.)
1 or 2 tomatos, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
Mix together separately, then add:
1/2 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Cook on Low for 6-8 hours. Remove bones from pork steak when done, and use forks to pull the pork apart
Serve with rice ( ~2 cups uncooked basmati rice is about what I use)

Before I discuss this photo I want to ask you, the reader, a few questions. You don’t need to answer these in the comments but I’d like you to think about them before continuing on…

1. What emotions, if any, does this image make you feel?
2. Do you have any memories of a scene like this in your own life?
3. What clues are in this photo that give a sense of context beyond just the fishing pole?
4. How were elements such as framing, composition, and depth of field used to create this image?

Now this isn’t supposed to be a quiz per se, but I do hope in looking at this picture you see more than just a kid with a fishing pole. In truth what’s happening here is rather quite mundane and perhaps only meaningful to me and maybe a few others. That’s why I want you to make your own interpretation of the image without really finding out too much about it from me. In a sense, the backstory here is kind of irrelevant since my real purpose in taking this photo was to maintain a sense of ambiguity so the viewers could attach their own meanings and draw their own conclusions. (I mean it: I specifically shot this image to be posted here on Weekly Fifty, and had this in mind when I took it.)

Who is the kid? Is it a boy or girl, and does it even matter? Where is this happening? Is it his or her first time using a fishing pole, or is he or she already familiar with such tools? I could answer all these questions but I don’t really want to since that’s not the point. What I set out to do here is show how photography can be used to elicit feelings, emotions, and help the viewer connect with the image on more than just an observational level. Of course all this sounds a bit narcissistic and you might, at this point, be rolling your eyes at the audacity of an amateur photographer like me who thinks a silly picture of a kid fishing could possibly be meaningful to anyone!

Anyway, I hope at the very least this image at least works on a technical level when you think about things such as composition and framing. I also tried to choose appropriate exposure settings to get the image I was thinking of in my mind when I shot this, and overall I’m fairly pleased with the results. I hope you are too, and I’m curious to find out what you think of the image in the comments below. Not the mechanics of it, but whether it did anything for you on a mental or emotional level or maybe even caused you to stop and think just for a tiny bit.

Alright, that’s enough of this for one post. Thanks for reading this far, and hopefully next time I’ll step down from the esoteric ladder and just post something fun :)

Ok, I’m going to be honest with you all: I have no idea what’s happening here. I was out for a walk around Theta Pond here on campus with my coworker when I saw this tree stump next to the sidewalk with…a bunch of orange glitter on it for some reason. I took this during spring break so there wasn’t really been any parties or any big activities at all on campus, and yet someone had seen fit to place, spill, or otherwise deposit a large helping of orange sparkles on the ground. As so often happens on these Weekly Fifty photos I walked right past it and thought “Huh. That’s interesting.” A few seconds later I turned around and, with my D7100 + 50mm lens in hand, decided to see if I could use this scene to make some kind of an interesting image. I’m not sure if I succeeded or not, but I do know I haven’t really taken a photo quite like this before.

As I knelt down to make this image I knew it would succeed or fail based on two things: the right depth of field and whether I could get the composition just right such that the sunlight would be dancing off the glitter. The latter wasn’t too difficult, as I quickly found an angle and position that I thought would work well but the former was a bit more tricky. I knew I wanted the stump to be in focus and the background to be blurry, but I also knew that the wider my aperture was the cooler the background would look. Ah, tradeoffs. That’s what photography is all about, isn’t it? Some focus stacking could have helped me but I have neither the time, the inclination, or the equipment necessary for that sort of thing so instead I just did the best with what I had.

I took a few frames at f/1.8 and then, remembering how many pictures I have ruined with depth of field that was simply too shallow, I closed my lens down to f/2.8 and took two or three additional pictures. I didn’t go any smaller than that because I knew f/4 wouldn’t get me the background I was aiming for, but I did get a few shots at f/2.4 just for good measure. I briefly checked the back LCD screen for composition but at no point did I examine the details to make sure I was getting the depth of field and sharp focus I was hoping for. I honestly was just trusting my instincts on this one, partially to see if it would work and partially because I didn’t want to spend ten minutes agonizing over, and trying to perfect, this image. After all my coworker and I were on a five-minute break, not an hour-long sabbatical.

Later on in Lightroom I did a few tweaks to the color and added a bit of sharpening on the stump, but mostly the image you see is how it looked in camera. This did give me some ideas for a few pictures that might be fun to try with toys and some glitter of my own, but if nothing else I think it made for a fun image that I felt lucky to be able to capture.

Several weeks ago my friend Julie issued a friendly challenge to me on Facebook: post one nature picture each day for a week. I normally don’t participate in activities like that because most of the time I end up forgetting to take photos or the challenge goes on far too long and I lose interest, but this one intrigued me. “One photo a day…I can do that,” I thought to myself. “And just a week? That’s not too much commitment.” I gladly accepted her challenge (Thanks Julie! If you’re reading this, thanks for putting me up to it. I sure had fun!) and spent the next several days deliberately trying to take photos of nature. This picture is from the fifth or sixth day if my memory serves me properly, and I should probably admit one thing right upfront: it was slightly staged, so while it might not conform to the letter of the law it certainly hits the spirit of the challenge.

I took this picture the day after a rainstorm, and it was one of those times where I knew exactly what sort of image I was going for but didn’t quite know if I would find it. With an overcast sky and everything either drenched or starting to dry I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a puddle with something floating in it. I really wanted to get a picture of a leaf, stick, flower, or something else floating on the water but I also had to find a puddle that wasn’t full of other distracting elements like grass, sticks, or random flotsam and jetsam. I came across a puddle that fit most of the criteria but had nothing floating in it, so I took an oak leaf and set it on the water only to have it immediately sink to the bottom. It was probably a good thing because a brown leaf in a brown puddle on an overcast day would have been fairly depressing.

A little while later I found the puddle you see in the picture but it had nothing floating in it, but I really liked the lighting and overall compositional elements of the shot so I walked around a bit to see if I could find something to add. Soon I came across a small patch of flowers and decided to pick one and set it in the puddle, which is what you see here. I soon realized that getting the shot I wanted required me to get very low to the very wet ground–something I was not keen on doing at that particular moment. Thankfully my D750 has a flip-out screen that can be used to compose photos in Live View, and it’s one of those things I hardly ever use but really comes in handy when I do need it. Longtime readers of this blog know that I used to shoot every photo with a super old Nikon D200, but this picture would have been impossible since that camera has no flip-out screen and doesn’t even have a Live View function either. To get this shot on that camera would have required me to not only get all wet and muddy from kneeling down super low on the ground, but it would have created all sorts of ripples in the water that would have resulted in an unusable shot. So…sometimes I guess it does pay to have better gear :)

The other consideration here was, as it so often is, depth of field. I needed a sense of context, so shooting at f/1.8 wasn’t an option since the entire foreground and background would be too blurry. f/5.6 resulted in a DOF that was simply too wide, and I finally settled on the sweet spot of f/3.3 which left the flower in focus and just enough context to see that it was floating in a little puddle. I really like the smooth, slightly blurry surface of the water and was overall quite pleased to get this picture. And it was all possible because of Julie’s challenge. Thanks Julie!

You know the old saying The best camera is the one you have with you. That was certainly true on this day when I snapped a picture of the sunrise while biking to work. However, instead of using my iPhone or a pocket camera I just happened to have my D750 + 50mm lens :) I was listening to a recent episode of This Week in Photo where one of the guests was talking about how to become a better photographer, and his advice was simple: use your camera every single day. Whether you just poke through the menus or take a picture of a coffee mug, spend some time every day using your camera and, he said, after one year you will be a vastly better photographer than when you started. Now, I can’t confirm or speak to the truth of that sentiment but I do know that using my camera on a regular basis (every now and then I go a day without picking it up, but for the most part I do something with it each day) has certainly helped me grow and improve. So before I get too deep into the weeds regarding this particular image I’d like to offer this bit of advice to anyone who is wondering how to become a better photographer: use your camera more. It’s not doing you any good sitting on your shelf, and could be doing amazing things once it’s in your hands.

That being said, here’s how this particular image unfolded, and keep in mind there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the setting or framing here. This scene is about one block from my house, and I live in a small midwestern city with nothing particularly noteworthy when it comes to photographic locations. (In other words, if you like this picture you can probably take one just like it wherever you live.) From what I have been told there used to be a house here but it was destroyed many years ago either by tornado or by fire, and now the property sits vacant with a small shed on the north and a holding pond just beyond the treeline. I bike past this every day and don’t think much of it, but on this particular day I was looking at things with a fresh eye since it was the Monday morning after daylight savings time and I was now seeing the sunrise from two wheels instead of from the kitchen table with my boys. Most of my readers know by now that I usually bring one of my cameras with me when I go to work and, since the morning of this photo was no exception, I pulled my bike over, got out my D750, and snapped a few images before continuing on my 3-mile commute. What I was surprised to see later on as I was editing the images was the difference between the top picture and this one, though the two were only taken about 30 seconds apart:

I like this second one too, but didn’t post it as my official photo for this week for a few reasons:

• There is no clear focal point. What is the viewer supposed to see: the yucca plant, the orange horizon, the treeline, or the vertical branches in the foreground? The picture is decent but too cluttered.

• The colors are not as good, even though it does have a nice foggy horizon line which I thought was pretty cool.

• I was hoping to get the foreground flora in focus and blur out the background by shooting at f/1.8 but the tops of the foreground branches blended into the background a bit too much even with the shallow depth of field.

If memory serves me correctly I shot the bottom image first, then moved forward just a bit to capture the second one and even though the top image is fairly pedestrian I like it for its simplicity: it’s a treeline with the sun poking out, and in all honesty, it’s hard to go wrong with a nice sunrise photo. I do realize that it’s a bit derivative and has more than a few similarities to a picture I posted in January, but I like to think that each successive similar picture is just another rung on the ladder of learning. Or maybe I’m just lazy :) Either way I’m happy with the image and if nothing else it was a nice reminder of why I like to bring my camera with me more often than not.