Purple Flower, Fountain
Over the last several years, one of my favorite photography locations I keep returning to time and time again is Theta Pond on the OSU Campus. I don’t really have location data on my photos, but if I did some kind of heat map I bet there would be a giant blob right in this section of the OSU campus where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students (not to mention faculty, staff, and just members of the general public) walk past each day. It’s an outstanding place to get photos, but also take a brief respite from the daily rigors of working on a college campus. The pond is surrounded by cypress and magnolia trees, some of which tower above the landscape but others, such as the one you see here, that are smaller, somewhat spindly, and produce beautiful purple flowers that are quite unlike almost any others I can recall…
Hocus Pocus Crocus
I remember years ago, when I first got my old-school Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8 lens, taking a picture of the tiny yellow crocus flowers in our front yard and being hit with the realization that yes, I could, in fact, get cool photos with my camera. Such images weren’t out of reach, the purview of a small group of experts with thousands of dollars of camera gear. All I needed was some basic equipment and, most importantly, a bit of knowledge of how photography works: exposure, lighting, composition, and the like. Ever since then (I really mean it. We still live in the same house, and I think about those early photography lessons a lot.) I have found myself returning to those same kinds of settings to kind of revisit the scenarios I encountered over a decade ago. And so, that’s kind of what we have here: a crocus…
The Prairie Past
This is kind of a companion piece to a photo I shared two weeks ago–that of a lone windmill set against a deep blue sky in the middle of a field of grass in central Kansas. In the earlier post I went on at length about my choice to zoom out to 70mm and show the windmill as a relatively small portion of the image, leaving the rest of the frame to be filled by the deep blue sky and rich gold field in the foreground. This shot has some obvious similarities, sure, but also plenty of notable differences that make it well worth its own entry here on Weekly Fifty. Something took place before I shot this photo that has happened many times to me over the years, and will probably continue long into the future. When I saw this scene out the east side of my car as…
Minnehaha Falls Froze
This is one of those photos that I think works well on a couple of different levels. There’s the surface layer, which is the image presented exactly as-is for the viewer to see and take in as they see fit. A snowy scene in the middle of a city (which you can sort of tell thanks to the brick building in the background) with a stone arch bridge crossing a small stream deep in a valley below. What you see, essentially, is what you get, though what you get out of it is another matter entirely. On another level, which you can’t see just by looking at the picture, is the personal connection I have to this scene and the memories it brings back as I look at it. My wife and I lived in St. Paul for five years when she was in graduate school, long before our kids…
Windmill Vista
Whenever I have the opportunity to take a prolonged solo drive, like going back to see friends and family in Nebraska, I enjoy, as often as I’m able to, taking the long and winding route rather than something faster, and more direct, such as the interstate. I like to stop, stretch my legs, look around, and take a photo or two along the way. It helps pass the time while also giving me the chance to see swaths of natural beauty that might otherwise go flying by at 75 miles an hour. One such route involves Highway 77 which winds through Kansas and, despite being built up over the years to the point where many long sections are now four-lane divided roads, still has a distinctly rural midwestern feel to it. While massive, modern wind turbines now tend to dominate the landscape it’s not uncommon to come across their wood-and-steel…
Misty Holmes
Here we are, the final photo in my series of images shot at Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Nebraska, when my family and I spent a few days visiting friends and family back in our old stomping grounds. We spent about an hour and a half circumnavigating the lake on a crushed limestone path with my brother, his wife, and their two friendly, furry Huskies named Tank and Radley. At this point we were almost done with the walk, and though I had taken several shots that tried to capture the scene in a way that emphasized the oppressive, haunting nature of the fog, and how different the entire experience was from anything I had come across in my life, I don’t think I quite nailed what I was going for. And then, as we rounded a bend in the path, we were presented with the scene you see here. I…
Enshrouded
I’m not sure if this third photo in my series of images taken on an extraordinarily foggy afternoon, while walking around Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Nebraska, with my family, my brother, his wife, and his two dogs, adequately conveys just how intense the ground-level cloud cover was, but if not, then, I’m not sure what actually could. This is on the west side of the lake, with the crushed limestone footpath on top of the dam literally disappearing into the distance under the sheer weight of the fog. There’s no AI image-generation here, no camera tricks, no special exposure techniques. It really did look just like you see here. (Well, with one slight exception: I did use the AI Removal tool in Lightroom to get rid of a few minor distractions like a stick on the path and a small metal pole on the left.) A screenshot of the original…
Cheshire Cat’s Tail
This is the second in a series of photos I took while visiting family and friends in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently. My wife and I, along with our kids, went for a walk around Holmes Lake with my brother, his wife, and their two dogs on an incredibly foggy afternoon. It’s hard to describe just how oppressive the mist was, but look back to last week’s photo (and keep checking back the next two weeks) to get even the vaguest idea. Suffice to say, it seemed as though a cloud had descended to earth and the eight of us were practically feeling our way through it as we walked the path around the lake. I stopped several times to take photos, such as this one of a thicket of cattails near the southern edge of the lake. Initially I used my 50mm lens to take a few shots of these fuzzy…
Among the Mists
This is the first in a four-part series, which is something I don’t recall ever doing here on Weekly Fifty. Every now and then I’ll post a pair of related images, and maybe once or twice I have done three in a row…but four? I think this could be a first. There’s good reason for it though–this and the next three images were all taken in a familiar location, but in extraordinary circumstances. If you like what you see so far, then I’m confident you’ll enjoy the next three. I shot this at Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Nebraska, when my family and I were visiting family recently. It’s my old stomping ground, you might say, as both my wife and I grew up in Lincoln and all of my immediate family still lives there. We always enjoy getting back to visit family and, when possible, friends too–though with so many…
Magic Tree Lights
You can probably tell that these are Christmas tree lights. What you might not know, at least not just from looking at the photo alone, is that these are fairly unique as far as Christmas tree lights go. There’s a couple of trees in Columbia, Missouri, that are absolutely jam-packed with lights, wound so tightly around every surface of the tree that in most places you can’t even see the bark underneath. It’s a sight to behold, and one that we have seen a few times when visiting family in Columbia and which I have featured here on Weekly Fifty a time or two. This year, though, I was able to capture an image of one of the trees a bit differently thanks to my macro lens. Normally I don’t bring that lens when we visit the Magic Trees because a 105mm lens on a full-frame camera is kind of…