Blastoff
Sometimes I’ll say things about a particular photo like “This was a fun photo to take” but those statements often apply to the act of making the image, not necessarily the activity or actions taking place during the scene. That was different here, as the activity was 99% of the enjoyment and the photo was almost an afterthought. Almost. A few years ago my brother-in-law and I built a water rocket based off some plans that NASA has available, and pretty much anyone with some basic tools and access to a hardware store can construct in an afternoon. I made a few modifications to the launcher mechanism over the years (including the four vertical poles you can see in the image, which serve to guide the rocket straight up instead of shooting outward at kids, cars, or windows. I also use my air compressor instead of a bicycle pump, which…
Clearwater Lake Departure
This is the final picture I took during my trip to the Boundary Waters this summer. I shot this looking northeast out on to Clearwater Lake right from the dock, and if you look very closely in the middle along the right side you’ll see a bit of an Easter Egg, so to speak. A Loon, the state bird of Minnesota, casually swimming in the chilly waters as if to bid us a fond farewell on this overcast morning. On Tuesday night my cousins and I had a campfire roaring for several hours as we talked long into the evening, but eventually the flames died to embers and we started to tidy up a few things for the trip back home the next morning. What a time it had been–three days completely separated from society, well out of range of any road or radio signal. Just the three of us…
Pine Lake Portage
This photo marks a first for me. It’s either a really big deal or nothing at all depending on your perspective, and honestly it probably isn’t anything to raise a fuss over whatsoever. It’s just that this image is different than any other I have posted on Weekly Fifty. Ever. For one simple reason: it’s the first time I’ve shared a picture that I took with my cell phone. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those purists who thinks that real photographers have to use a fancy-pants expensive camera, or that real photography requires expensive dedicated camera gear. Shoot what you like with the gear you have, and don’t worry what anyone else thinks. At least that’s my general approach, and it has worked pretty well for me over the years. The reason I started Weekly Fifty was to hold myself accountable for using my camera gear…
The Walk
I realize that this picture seems like it has very little to do with perambulating, but part of the title is just the simple fact that I’m not very good at coming up with titles. In typical Simon fashion I don’t know what kind of flower this is, but I do know that it’s big. Large. Huge. At least by my reckoning, anyway. My wife and I walk by this flowering plant every morning on our usual route while our kids bike up ahead, and for a while now I’ve thought about taking a picture because it’s just such an interesting flower to look at. Most days I simply forget to bring my camera and on days when I do remember there’s usually some kind of aesthetic issue: bad lighting, harsh shadows, or the flower itself is a bit closed-up and not very photogenic. On this particular morning I don’t…
Indian Paintbrush
This is another classic example of the type of photo I find myself taking so often: it’s a rather normal subject, in a rather unremarkable situation, that I see on a fairly regular basis, and yet I thought it would make for an interesting photograph. And I think it worked out pretty well. If you scroll back far enough here on the blog you will see a handful of similar photos–that is to say, Indian Paintbrush flowers in the morning light, including one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. These flowers practically litter the countryside here in Oklahoma, but it wasn’t until the night I shot this image that I even found out their name–a bit of trivia that came about during a conversation I had with my neighbor after I put my camera away and got on my bike to ride back home after taking this shot. I’m…
Altercation
Look, I don’t want to sit here and read too much into things that are really just simple photographs. After all, sometimes (I would argue most of the time) a cigar is just a cigar. And yet, it’s fun to let your mind run wild every now and then and imagine characters, dialog, emotions, and entire scenes where none really exists. I think that’s what makes this picture kind of interesting to me. Someone can look at this and just see two flowers after a bit of rain. Someone else might see a different scene entirely. But first, the photo itself. I shot this in a vacant lot while out on a walk with my wife and kids–a lot that, after walking past it many times over the past few weeks, I knew contained a lot of flowers. (Side note: Notice a trend here? I used to take lots of…
Light Emerald
Ok, this isn’t what you think. Or, perhaps I should say, it probably isn’t what you think. This isn’t some state-of-the-art macro setup with fancy lighting. It’s pretty basic, to be honest. So basic it’s almost funny: I shot this with my Nikon D500 (though it could have been any crop-sensor DSLR, even my old D7100, as nothing about this image required a D500) and my old 50mm f/1.8 lens and a set of el cheapo close-up filters. The same close-up filters I’ve had for years and you have, no doubt, read about many times here on Weekly Fifty. The location? The glass door leading out to our back porch. The time? After dinner one evening back in June. Anyone could have taken this shot, I just happened to be the one who clicked the shutter button. But that doesn’t necessarily diminish the value of the image, because it was…
Taking Flight
You might be seeing a pattern here: this is the third sunset photo in as many weeks, much like my series of cardinal bird shots from a little while ago. While those avian images were somewhat planned, in that I knew as I was looking through them that I would end up posting at least three, this was more serendipitous though just as enjoyable for me to shoot the photos. While my two earlier sunset pictures were taken at Caribou Lake in the Boundary Waters, this was shot on my drive home somewhere in Iowa. I don’t remember exactly, but judging by the timestamp I think it was maybe an hour north of Des Moines. I was driving south on Interstate 35 when I saw a field of wind turbines set aglow in the fading sunlight, so I looked for a spot to pull over and take a picture. One…
Evening Peace
If this looks similar to last week’s photo, that’s because I shot it at the same location, using the same gear, at the same time of day, using almost the same exposure settings. The only difference is that this was 24 hours later, and had different weather conditions which led to a strikingly different image as a result. In my photo from last week you can see the streaks in the sky which show cloud movement over the course of a two-minute exposure. Clearly those streaks are not present here, which indicates that the weather was much calmer and peaceful. There’s also another difference brought on by the lack of wind: the lake is a perfect reflection of the trees, almost like something out of a Bob Ross painting. Even though last week’s image showed a flat, glassy lake as a result of a long exposure, the reflection of the…
Caribou Lake Sunset
Earlier this year I had the incredible opportunity to go camping at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area with my two cousins. It was a trip my wife arranged for my 40th birthday, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with how everything turned out. The BWCA is more than a thousand square miles of untouched wilderness at the Minnesota/Canada border, with hundreds of lakes, just as many campsites, and no motorized vehicles allowed. We arrived at the Clearwater Lodge entry point at 7am (which meant we had to leave the Twin Cities about 1:30am) on a Sunday morning, got our gear, packed everything into a canoe, and hit the waters. A few hours later we arrived at our campsite on Caribou Lake which was our home base until Wednesday morning. Weight is pretty important on a trip like this, since you have to carry everything you bring with on your…