Sunrise Texture
One of my favorite times to take photos is after a rain, especially if the weather is mild and not freezing, excessively windy, or other such adverse condition. Another ideal opportunity is in the morning when the sun is just peeking over the horizon. But when you combine the two, you can really see something special–as long as you’ve got your eyes open and are looking for it, that is. When I left for work on one such morning I made sure to bring my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens along with me, and on the short walk between my car and my office on the Oklahoma State University campus I made sure to keep my eyes peeled in an effort to actively seek out something to photograph: a subject, a scene, a mood, or anything else that might look good when captured with my camera. I soon…
Silhouette Sunrise
This photo is kind of a companion, you might say, to another sunrise photo I shared recently. Both share some obvious features such as a clear horizon, a warm color gradient as the sky changes from dark to light, trees in the foreground, and so on. But it’s the differences that really make each image stand out in its own way, and the more you look at them the more distinct and different each one becomes. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions of course, and I’m not going to say that either one is better or worse than the other. Rather, I hope you (and I, if I’m being honest) find something interesting and unique about each image–and maybe something to critique or learn from also. Instead of comparing the two, I’ll (mostly) just try to focus on what’s going on with this one and let the other speak…
(What’s the story) Morning Glow-ry
Ok look, after all this time you should probably know that I’m not great when it comes to titles. But for some reason this week’s shot made me think of this song, and the title just kind of followed naturally. Maybe it’s because the only way to get a picture like this one is to wake up early, or maybe because it’s just a really good song that tends to get stuck in my mind every now and then. Either way, well, let’s get to the photo already :) A few weeks ago I talked about how one of the most important things you can do to get better photos is to just have your camera with you, and this is yet another example of the truth of that simple little maxim. There was nothing remarkable about this scene at all–just a small outdoor space in the native plant corridor…
Oklahoma Highway Sunrise
I almost used this photo as my first shot for 2026. I thought it would be a pleasant way to ring in the new year, even though my first photo of said year would not appear here on the blog until several days after the year began. No matter, I thought. I could come up with a couple metaphors to apply here, having to do with the start of something new, bright things ahead, and so on. So what happened? Why didn’t this image appear in conjunction with a change of the calendar? Honestly, and this is going to sound kind of silly, but I promise it’s true: I just forgot. I almost never put up photos on Weekly Fifty that coincide with any temporal calendar events and, if I do, it’s usually just a coincidence. In this case, it’s kind of the opposite in that I actually did think…
Benchmark
This is a bit of a companion to last week’s picture of a rose in the early morning, in that it was taken at the same location, at roughly the same time of day, and bears some interesting characteristics that are not super common for my pictures. Basically, despite the familiar elements in this picture it was nonetheless a fun learning opportunity and a chance for me to try out something new or, perhaps more accurately, try taking a picture in lighting conditions that are quite unfamiliar to me. One notable difference between this photo and many of my photos is that I didn’t set out to capture a specific subject in the traditional sense. Rather, my goal was to capture a mood, or an emotion, and convey it through an entire scene. If you look at this picture and feel something–a sense of calm, quiet, or peace, or maybe…
Morning Bokeh
I didn’t realize how similar this photo was to last week’s image until I saw them next to each other in my Flickr gallery. And because of that similarity, I almost didn’t even post it this week. It felt like I should have something a bit different, perhaps grander or with some kind of deeper meaning or symbolism to kick off the new year. Anything but what basically amounts to a re-skinned version of the same shot I put up last week. And yet, here we are :) Why? I’m glad you asked! And while I’m at it, happy new year! It’s only been about a week since 2026 started, but I hope it’s been a good one for you and portends good things ahead as well. So about this photo. See, the thing is, in a lot of ways it’s very much a classic Weekly Fifty photo: a single…
Sunrise Sunflower
I don’t usually do timely or topical photo here on Weekly Fifty (case in point: last week’s shot of a purple leaf with a raindrop, which had pretty much nothing at all to do with Christmas) but I did think that this one might be fitting to close out the year. Not in any literal sense, since sunflowers and the end of the year don’t typically go together, but mostly because what this photo represents to me. This has been a year of growth and change, but for many people, a year of uncertainty and even anxiety. Conflicts around the world as well as here at home, political unrest, economic uncertainty…the list goes on and on. And yet, the sun still rises. In dark days, such as the thick of winter when, in the northern hemisphere, daylight wanes and temperatures drop, the sun still rises. In difficult times, the sun…
Weekly Fifty Year in Review 2025
https://youtu.be/jHQspRtDLXw YouTube link in case the embed doesn’t work. Note: I was wrong about 14 years! The first Weekly Fifty photo was posted on March 5, 2013, which means this year will be 13 years.
Purple Pooling
One thing I have come to realize about myself as a photographer, or rather, the kinds of photos I enjoy taking, is that close-ups of things involving water are really cool. Some of my favorite shots over the years were captured after a nice heavy rain when the earth is coated in a high-gloss shine that lets things gleam and glisten in a way that they just can’t do otherwise. Earlier this year I did a whole series of posts that featured photos I took at the local botanic garden one rainy spring morning, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of taking these kinds of pictures. Of course I also hope to continue learning and growing as a photographer, branching out into new areas and trying new things so I can keep exploring areas of this art but at the end of the day, there’s a simple logic…
Leafy Business
Over all the years I have been actively and intentionally photographing the world around me, as opposed to casual snapshots without much thought behind them (which should not be misconstrued as an implication that such pictures are inherently devoid of meaning and purpose) there are two things I keep coming back to that need to be in place for me to take a good picture: I need to have my camera with me. Preferably one of my DSLRs, but any camera will do. I need to actively seek out photo opportunities. Other things help, for sure, but without those two things in place it’s not likely I’ll get much in the way of a good photograph. Or any photograph at all, if I don’t have a camera. That, then, offers a bit of background, or perhaps context, for today’s photo. When I left for work on the morning I saw…