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

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 had my Nikon D750 and 50mm f/1.8 lens, the same one I purchased well over a decade ago, the lens that ignited my passion for photography, and thought that if any visual representation could convey what were seeing to someone who was not present (i.e. most of you looking at today’s image online) it would be this: a small cluster of benches among bare trees thrust out into the lake on a thin peninsula, with a distant shoreline shrouded in mist.

I dialed in an aperture of f/4, with auto-ISO choosing a shutter of 1/180 and ISO 200, focused on the tree farthest out on the breakwater, and took the shot you see here. Other than some minimal adjustments in Lightroom (shadows, highlights, etc.) what you see is exactly as it was in the moment. As I took a few more shots just for good measure, I noticed one tiny bit of movement that didn’t catch my initially, but whose presence initially…well…kind of bothered me: the headlights. The car was ever so slowly, but also quite safely, creeping down the road on the other side of the lake and I was impatiently hoping it would move along already so it wouldn’t ruin the shot. It finally did, at which point I was able to finally get some photos without it.

However, the more I looked at my images in Lightroom, the more I ended up appreciating, and finally embracing, the pair of vehicle lights far in the distance. They added a spark of brightness (two, to be precise) to an otherwise entirely dully, gray composition and also created a sense of restless foreboding not unlike the palpable unease that permeates Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. I also like that the headlights are not immediately obvious, especially when viewed on a small screen like a mobile phone, but add an additional layer of the scene to take in and explore upon deeper inspection.

Finally, frequent reader might be familiar with how much I go on and on about the concept of context. That is, something within the frame to give the viewer a sense of time, place, or scale that they can latch on to and connect to the rest of the image. Or even themselves. Those headlights, I came to realize, served to add much-needed context to the image that elevates it above the rest that I took where the lights were simply not present. They give you, the viewer, an idea of how far away the shore is and the downward angle of the lights indicates a road winding up and down among the contours of the hillside. I was thoroughly, and quite pleasantly, surprised at how much those headlights added to the image and remain incredibly grateful to the nameless driver who had no idea how much they were contributing to the photo.

This was a fun way to cap off the walk, and a unique photography experience I likely will not soon forget–or be able to repeat. Thank you for coming along this journey with me, and don’t worry…if you’re tired of gray foggy photos, next week should be a familiar return to form.

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.)

I shot this with my Nikon D750 and 50mm f/1.8 lens, having switched back to the good ol’ Nifty Fifty after taking last week’s close-up shot of a cattail covered in condensation. The 50 isn’t exactly a wide-angle landscape lens, but it’s the only other lens I had with me and, when paired with a full-frame camera, it can work really well even outdoors. It certainly did here, anyway. I shot this at f/4, focused midway down the path, and auto-ISO chose a shutter of 1/180 and ISO 100. Not bad at all.

More than anything, I think this image really succeeds in capturing some more esoteric elements of photography: mood, feeling, emotion, perhaps even a sense of foreboding or uncertainty. It’s also a little unclear just what is going on here, with a path leading straight to the horizon, clouds on either side, and a haze off in the distance completely obscuring almost any recognizable objects. It might seem almost like a scene out of the Frank Darabont movie The Mist, but in real life. I’m not sure that was my goal when I took it initially, since mostly the six of us were too busy being stunned at the sight we were witnessing for me to think about capturing anything more than cool photos of the fog-covered lake, but the more I looked at it afterwards in Lightroom the more it kind of took on a life of its own.

Even as I write about this picture I’m kind of at a loss for words, because I’m not really sure what I can say that adequately expresses what I feel when I look at it. Hope? Trepidation? Uncertainty? A sense of standing on the edge of a precipice? If you were to visit this exact spot on pretty much any other day, I don’t think you would find it remarkable at all. It’s just a normal lake in the middle of a normal town in Nebraska. And yet, it’s something else entirely when wrapped completely in fog. So I’ll just leave it at that, and invite you to share your

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 droplet-covered oddities, but it wasn’t quite giving me the results I was hoping for. There was too much going on in the frame, and with the monochromatic color palette it was difficult to know what to even look at. I carefully, oh so carefully, switched out lenses using my old sling-style camera bag as a makeshift surface on which to make the swap, and once my macro lens was attached and Nifty Fifty was properly stowed I went back for another round of photos.

Suddenly, the hundreds of cattails took on a while new light when seen through my macro lens. I could easily isolate a single fuzzy stick in the frame, and then the only issue became which one to focus on–as well as where to put it in the frame, what aperture to use to get the desired depth of field, what to include in the background, and how to do it all quickly enough that I didn’t get left behind my everyone else as they kept walking. (Full disclosure: I encouraged them to all go on ahead, since I wasn’t sure how much time I would need.) I liked the look of the one you see featured above; it had just the right combination of a fuzzy coat over a thick brown center, whereas the balance in many of the others was off a bit too much for my taste.

I shot this at f/4 which was probably a bit too wide, since the depth of field ended up being slightly shallow for my taste. Though I did get the things in focus that really mattered to me, especially the droplets of condensation on the right-hand side. I tried to position the subject in the frame such that it did not conflict with background elements, and I also liked the vertical lines going through the entire frame–not just the featured cattail, but all the rest of them too. The other little bit that I really like about this is how the top of the stalk doesn’t quite go through the frame. There’s a tiny gap of space right at the very top, which lets the viewer know where this blob of fuzz is positioned on the stalk. It’s a small tough, but one that matters to me :)

Even though this doesn’t convey the same sense of oppressive, overwhelming fog that last week’s photo did, I hope it presents a similar mood despite being a very different composition overall. That was my goal and I’m curious to know what you think too.

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 nieces and nephews spread throughout the city the latter isn’t always possible. My youngest brother and his wife enjoy taking their dogs, a pair of incredibly pleasant huskies, for walks along the crushed limestone trail that winds around the perimeter of the lake, and on this particularly foggy afternoon they invited us to join them. Even just driving to the lake felt like pushing through a cloud, and once we got there and started down the path the atmosphere grew ever more surreal as we walked.

I don’t think I can recall ever being surrounded by quite so much fog ever in my entire life. Even thinking back to when I was a kid I can recall situations with near-zero visibility, but this was something else entirely. As we slowly circumnavigated the lake, we could almost feel the fog surrounding us. Not metaphorically, but literally–I could make a sweeping motion with my hand and feel, ever so faintly, droplets coalescing on my palm. It was equal parts eerie and fascinating, and on more than one occasion I bade the group to go on ahead without me while I attempted to capture a photo or two. One of which you can see here.

I shot this with my Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens, though this certainly is not the setting in which I would normally find myself when using that particular setup. It worked out well though, since the long focal length drew the farther shore a bit closer while the narrow field of view was made even more claustrophobic thanks to the brown stalks on either side. (For one of the best examples of this technique, look no further than the underwater march in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, where the seafloor below and the rocks above create a condensed frame that draws your attention right to the center, while creating a subtle feeling of unease for the viewer.) I shot this at f/4 and focused midway down the path, which created a subtle foreground and background blur that I quite like. Perhaps f/8 or f/11 would have been good, as they would have resulted in wider depth of field, but the barely noticeable blur was just what I was going for and it worked out pretty well.

One of my favorite aspects of this image is how you can barely, just barely, make out some of the elements on the far shore such as trees and their reflections on the water. That’s not an editing trick, mind you. It really was just as you see here, and an incredible experience overall. One that I’m eager to share here and over the next few weeks.

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 the opposite gear combo one would want in order to fit a 30-foot-tall tree in a single photo.

But this time, I decided to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and, instead of getting far away for a shot of the entire tree, I got as close as possible to get a photo of just a couple bulbs. My thinking, and you’ll have to tell me if I’m right about this or not, was that I could find a way to convey a sense of the sheer quantity of lights on the tree to a viewer just by focusing on a very tiny slice of the whole. I got right up next to the tree, pointed my camera upwards, dialed in an exposure of f/8 with auto-ISO set to use a minimum shutter speed of 1/180 second, which resulted in an actual ISO of 1400. (The grainy effects of which were mitigated somewhat by Adobe Lightroom’s Denoise tool, of which regular readers will know I am most definitely a fan.)

I hope that even without seeing the entire tree, you the viewer might have a sense that there sure a ton of lights on it. It might be tricky to direct your attention to one of the two lights that are actually in focus, but my idea is that those two will draw your gaze and then you would start to take in all the rest that the picture has to offer. I’m not sure that entirely worked though–there’s so much to look at, and so many colors and spots of light vying for your attention, that the composition kind of collapses on itself. Where should you look? What are you looking at? What is going on? Maybe this image works best as some kind of abstract piece of modern art. Maybe it does exactly what I intended, and you have a sense that you’re looking at a tiny slice of thousands of Christmas lights.

In any case, one thing I can say for certain: I enjoyed the challenge of taking this photo, and look forward to returning to the scene, hopefully next Christmas, and giving it another try. And at the very least, this picture makes me think of time well spent with family over the Christmas season, and that by itself makes it a fine photo in my book :)