Golden Light
I don’t like taking pictures that are basically carbon copies of earlier photos, but I do enjoy paying homage to previous photos by way of making images that are inspired by their forebears. The photographic pronoun to a visual antecedent, if you will. When I shot this picture (about three minutes before last week’s photo, as a matter of fact) I specifically had another shot on my mind which I took almost exactly three years earlier. What attracted me to the initial image from November 2016 was a sense of color and backlighting, and I liked the contrasting colors too. So when I came across a similar scene near Theta Pond I wanted to use some of my lessons I learned taking the earlier photo in what was, hopefully, some new and interesting ways. First of all, the subject. The original had a wide blade of yellow grass slicing vertically…
After the Fall
Just as I don’t usually take photos with specific days or times of the year in mind for posting, I also don’t usually take them with the intention of showing them together as a specific group. This changes from time to time, like when I did my series of sunset images last summer, but for the most part I just post pictures here on the blog in no particular order and with no real rhyme or reason. However, when I shot this image I thought it would serve well as somewhat of a companion piece to last week’s photo of a magnolia seed pod. As often happens with my Weekly Fifty photos I was out on a short walk around Theta Pond on campus and I saw this husk resting on a stone ledge, having long since served its purpose of creating seeds for eventual dissemination. Magnolia flowers, and their…
Maglownia
In looking through some of my photos from Fall 2019 I realized I didn’t have too many of one of my favorite subjects, that of magnolia seed pods as they begin to constrict and force out the beautiful red seeds that lie within. I’ve posted several images of these seed pods over the years here on Weekly Fifty and maybe that’s why I wasn’t all that interested in taking more pictures of the same subject again. It felt like a been-there-done-that scenario, and I don’t want to shoot the same pictures of the same things over and over. When I went out for a short walk around Theta Pond in mid November I certainly didn’t plan on taking a picture of yet another magnolia seed pod. In fact, most of the trees had long since shed their seeds which eliminated even the opportunity of getting the same type of picture…
Lustrous
As I mentioned in my photo commentary last week, I don’t usually schedule specific pictures for certain days just like my photo from last week I’m making an exception here. I didn’t take this picture so I could use it as the first image of 2020, but as I was looking through my image collection I thought it might be an appropriate way to ring in the new year. So here you go :) I shot this back in the fall of 2019 in mid afternoon on a sunny day, and the composition was a bit different for me because of how the light hits the flower. Typically I don’t use backlighting very much but I thought it would work pretty well in this case, and think it makes the resulting image look a bit more interesting and dynamic as a result. If the sun were behind me it would…
To sing a song
First of all…Merry Christmas! I hope this day, and this season, finds you and your family happy and well, and may you be given peace and love as we celebrate the birth of Christ. John 3:16 says that “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, that whoever believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” How incredible to think that the baby born in a manger over two millennia ago, because there was no room for his family at the inn in Bethlehem, would one day be the savior of all mankind. Praise God for His saving grace, and for cleansing us from sin by the blood of his own son. I usually don’t plan my pictures here on Weekly Fifty to coincide with any particular time of year, but for this one I did want to make it a little special due…
2019 in Review
https://youtu.be/fdAp6X6MIxQ To wrap up 2019* I wanted to take a look back at the past year, and even farther, and talk about where things with Weekly Fifty have been, where they are now, and where I see them going in the new year and beyond. *I know we still have almost two weeks left in the year, but I figure this is close enough :)
Observer
Sometimes I really wish I had a proper macro lens. There aren’t too many occasions on which it would be useful, but this was definitely one of them. I made do with my usual 50mm lens and close-up filters, but good gravy I think an actual macro lens would have been so much better! Maybe someday :) In the meantime I have fun with my cheapo close-up filters and I do enjoy getting shots like this, if nothing else for the sheer challenge of it all. The sun was going down one evening early in November and I had just come from inside the house with a garbage bag full of trash that was bound for the bin, but I stopped short when I saw this wasp sitting on the black lid. He was just sort of minding his own business and didn’t seem interested in stinging anyone, so I…
In the thick of it
I’m not really sure what to think about this one. On one hand, it’s kind of a neat picture of a red leaf in the middle of a sea of yellow and orange, but on the other hand it really wasn’t anything special when I shot the photo. It was just a plant I happened to walk by on campus one day, and since I had my camera and 85mm f/1.8 lens I figured I might as well try to take a picture. I knew I wanted the red leaf to be sharp and focused, but it was really tricky to nail down because of a stiff breeze that kept confounding matters. I usually just shoot through the viewfinder on my DSLRs because it just works well, and I don’t need a live histogram or focus peaking or other benefits that you get when shooting Live View. Not to mention…
Hail to the king
Last year the annual monarch butterfly migration kind of caught me off guard, so this year I was determined to be a little more prepared when the orange-winged creatures started fluttering through town. I used a migration tracker map to figure out when a good time would be to start looking, and made sure to have my camera with me and ready to go. The day I shot this, in early October, was a bit warm after a few rather chilly afternoons but despite the nice weather and my map-based planning I really didn’t see many butterflies at all when I took a stroll through campus after lunch. I had my D7100 and 85 f/1.8 lens which I knew would help me get a good shot without getting too close to any butterflies and, hence, scaring them away, and it would have worked great if only I had seen more…
Burning Bright
I don’t really know how I got this shot. I mean, I know how I got it in a mechanical sense, but the fact that I was standing right in the middle of a venn diagram consisting of so many disparate elements still kind of boggles my mind. I leave for work about the same time each morning: 7:10 to 7:15am. That means twice a year there is a window of about one week where I have the opportunity to get shots of the sunrise, barring any atmospheric troubles like stormy or overcast skies. On the morning of September 19, 2019, I could see a bit of fog left on the ground as the sky turned from black to gray while I was getting ready for work, so after hugging my wife and kids I grabbed my Nikon D750 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens to see if I might be able…