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

If last week’s image could be considered a rough draft of sorts, then this might well be seen as the final iteration (albeit in a very small series of two) that, despite being taken just 33 seconds after the other one, builds on it in almost every way and is, in my opinion, a significantly better image as a result. The same basic idea is present here as well as the original: a dying cluster of four small leaves, backlit, in the center of the frame surrounded by other elements of nature bathed in brilliant overhead light from the afternoon winter sun. But, as my kids might say, this image has leveled up significantly.

First, and most notably, there is simply a lot more color in this shot. Instead of a monochrome color palette we now have rich, deep reds on the periphery and dull greens in the background. While the relatively black-and-white original was find on its own merits, seeing a similar shot replete with color reveals how empty the first one was by comparison.

It’s not just the color that’s improved here, though that’s the most obvious element. The first shot was not just mono-chromatic but mono-planar as well. The leaves in the center felt like they might as well have just been taped to a sheet of flat paper, whereas here the top-right leaf is curled towards the camera like fingers on a hand, closing as if grasping tightly on to an unseen support. It makes the subject feel three-dimensional and, as a result, more interesting and perhaps even compelling. It lends a sense of character, as my wife might say. The rest of the composition feels more fleshed-out as well, with a vertical branch in the foreground which essentially compresses the frame and imparts a sense of intimacy, as if we the viewer are peeking into a hidden world. The stalk on which the leaves are mounted recedes into the background, where more red leaves reside.

Finally, I did a better job on the raw exposure settings–specifically the smaller f/11 aperture which resulted in more of the subject being in focus due to the wider focal plane. The original was shot at f/6.7 and keen-eyed viewers might have looked at the original on Flickr and seen segments of the leaves that were a bit blurry because of the shallow depth of field. That’s not entirely resolved here, but it’s a lot better.

I really like how this turned out, not just from a photography perspective from an educational perspective. In under a minute I learned a lot about what to do, what not to do, and implemented several changes over the original that made the second version a lot better. But the second would not have happened without the first–an important point to remember about the learning process. You can’t get to where you’re going without coming from where you’ve been. And when you do get there, hopefully you will see that there’s still so much left to explore.

I don’t normally do this here on Weekly Fifty, but this week’s image is the first in a two-part series of directly connected images that build on one another in a very linear sense. I’m sharing this photo first because I took it first, and then next week I’ll post the follow-up as an illustration of how even in the span of a few minutes, learning and growth are possible. Maybe even essential. And hopefully this one-two combination will serve as an example and, perhaps, even a bit of inspiration.

I took this photo while I was out walking around the OSU campus one chilly afternoon, Nikon D750 and 105mm macro lens in hand, on a quick break from work. (I really don’t take breaks in the traditional sense, such as the ol’ two 15’s and a Lunch that I was allowed back at the grocery store in college, but I do like to go on a walk every now and then to clear my mind and do a bit of a mental reset. And those walks are best enjoyed with a camera…) I saw this relatively unassuming cluster of four leaves jutting out from the plant from whence it came, and thought about how I might capture an interesting photo of it. After a couple of tries I realized the key that was missing: backlighting. Instead of putting the sun behind me, I repositioned myself with the sun overhead and in front of me and, as a result, behind the leaves. That one little maneuver made all the difference, and entirely transformed not just the subject but the entire composition.

Immediately the leaves went from dull to radiant, and the rest of the composition was transformed from rather dull, normal, and mostly uninteresting to a brilliant collection of light and shadow with a bit of foreground elements to add a sense of perspective and depth and dimension. I used an aperture of f/6.7 which I could have easily stopped down to f/8 to make the subject even sharper but it works well enough as-is. I put the leaves right in the center to immediately draw your eye, which is classic Weekly Fifty also. It’s a formula, but it works, and I like to use it :)

Still, even though a lot of this shot worked, there were some things that just didn’t. Even though from a technical perspective it gets the job done, from an artistic standpoint it’s just kind of…unfulfilling. But that’s where I’ll leave things, and to finish the story you’ll have to come back next week :)

This is another photo that I took when my brother and his family were visiting recently, and even though there’s some clear similarities to many other images I have shared there’s also something kind of unique about it that I really like. (Though my uncle would quibble with that phrasing: it is not possible, he would say, for something to be kind of unique. It is or it is not. There is no middle ground. But if language is merely a vehicle for transmitting meaning, then my reply would be simply “Yeah, but you get what I’m saying.” I digress.) It’s not necessarily the glowing leaf, or the color palette, or the overall composition with the bright orange/yellow subject in the middle standing out against the greens behind it. Those are all well and good, but what I find kind of fascinating about this image, in a way that keeps surprising me, is how the more I look at it the more I find in it.

Side note: I thought about writing the rest of this post in second-person, but the more I typed the more presumptuous it sounded. Who am I to say what you or anyone else might notice or glean from one of my photos? Instead, the traditional first-person narration not only suffices but fits quite well.

The first thing I noticed about this scene, which is also the first thing I see when I look at the image itself, is the bright yellow leaf in the center. Sure that sounds a bit obvious, but it’s true–and it’s also what serves to build a foundation for the rest of the image. The yellow contrasts quite nicely with the light green leaves and clear sky in the background, and it immediately drew me in as I looked around for photo opportunities in my neighbor’s field with my brother while our kids played makeshift disc golf. I dialed in an aperture of f/8, got close enough to fill a decent amount of the frame with the subject, and fired off a couple of shots. Bam! Done and done.

Later on, as I was looking through my photos in Lightroom, something changed. Not the picture itself, but the way in which I engaged with it: I started noticing all kinds of other elements that were already present, but hitherto unseen despite being right in front of me the whole time. The wispy lines of dark brown on the upper portion of the leaf. The bright glowing edges along the perimeter of orange. The circular spots of out-of-focus light speckled all throughout the right side of the background. The stick curving sharply up and to the right, coming ever so close to the leaf but not quite touching it. The vertical smears of burnt umber on the left, as if a pale imitation of Bob Ross had just let loose with sweeping whimsical brush strokes. And on and on.

Usually my photos are pretty simple: a subject, more often than not in the center or along a vertical third, with an out of focus background. Nothing too complicated, nothing to challenge the photographer or the viewer all that much. And by some metrics this one serves to maintain status quo. But then, upon closer inspection…well, I wonder if it does for you what it did for me :)

Side note: This publication of this photo coincides with the 13th anniversary of Weekly Fifty going online–give or take a day or two. Whether you’ve been following for years, months, weeks, or this is your first time here…thank you! I hope you enjoy my photos and the posts and/or audio messages, and here’s to many more to come.

I’ve learned over the past few years (or maybe less; I’m not sure. It feels like a while, but maybe it actually hasn’t been that long) that one type of image I really enjoy taking is that of a backlit leaf in the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is shining through with such brilliance that it almost seems as though the leaf itself is its own light source. During midday, not so much, but if you can catch a leaf when the sun is low on the horizon, it’s basically the photography equivalent of a fireplace with a hot tiger tummy. There’s one small, subtle element in this picture I don’t often see though, and it elevates it beyond a lot of similar images I have taken in the past–I didn’t even notice it when I clicked the shutter button, but as I was going through my photo reel in Lightroom it was, in some ways, the only thing I could notice.

But I think I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

Let’s start from the beginning here. I shot this when my brother and his kids were visiting recently, and we were all passing the afternoon together in my neighbor’s field. The kids were playing disc golf using trees and shrubs to score points, and the grownups were chatting and catching up on things–my brother and I with our cameras in hand. We came across a bush with some leaves still clinging to life and, with the sun lowering on the horizon, remarked at how they appeared radiant in a way that was simply not present earlier in the day. I crouched down, pointed my camera up just slightly, dialed in an aperture of f/8 on my 105mm macro lens, and fired off a dozen or so exposures of the green cluster you see in today’s photo. What really caught my eye was the transparent vertical slice on the main in-focus leaf; it gave me (and, hopefully, you the viewer) something to instantly draw my eye and, in a sense, command my attention. Other clusters of fully intact leaves weren’t as interesting, but this one with its bright spot in the middle caught my gaze in a way I didn’t really expect but very much appreciated.

What I didn’t notice, though, was the single strand of spider silk in the top-right corner. As I was looking through the shots after importing them into Lightroom, I noticed that almost all of them had a couple such threads–each catching the sunlight from a slightly different angle. I was surprised at how much those tiny, shiny slivers changed the entire composition. This one, in my opinion the best of the bunch, and I’m so happy with how that tiny line of light changes things. It makes the stillness of the leaves come alive, as if there is a bolt of microscopic lightning careening towards the greenery. Or a drop of rain falling from the sky. It’s just a strand of spider web, but it feels like so much more and I am so pleased to have been able to capture it in this picture.

I’m not sure how I feel about this picture.

There are some things I really like about it, and others, well, I just don’t quite know. Is it good? Sure, in a lot of ways it really is. But in some other ways it doesn’t quite work or fails entirely. It’s weird. I honestly can’t quite make up my mind on this one, and I’m really curious what you think.

At the risk of sounding a bit too self-deprecating (which is not my intention, mind you. I prefer to engage in introspection and reflection, and I hope that’s how this analysis comes across) let’s take a look at the things that I like about this picture. What works well, I suppose you might say, if this were some kind of customer-service survey :)

I really like the rich textures on display here. The subtle grooves and crevasses, the way the light bounces off the edges of the leaf and glistens on every little bump and indentation lend this dying specimen an entirely new life right in front of your eyes. Do yourself a favor and click through to the original on Flickr, view it at full resolution, and you’ll see what I mean. I also like how I was able to capture the subject as it hung delicately between the arms of some kind of native Oklahoma plant, caught on its way to the ground from the tree above as if it were saying I got you, man!

Also of note: the entirely out-of-focus background which almost seems like broad brush strokes, crossing the frame in wide swaths of dull earth tones. For that you can thank the f/8 aperture which I find myself using so often in my close-up photography, along with the AI noise reduction feature in Lightroom which transformed this ISO 5600 shot into one that looks as if it were taken at ISO 100. Whatever magic Adobe bakes into that algorithm, it just works. And finally, the pièce de résistance, if you will, is the drop of water hanging precariously from the base of the stem. It’s a subtle but meaningful touch that elevates the image beyond just a simple leaf stuck in a brown plant.

So what’s not to like? Why am I so harsh on this photo? As much as it succeeds in some important areas, it entirely collapses in others essential elements of photography. For one, the color. A yellow subject against a yellow-and-brown background does not a good image make, no matter how sharp the former and how blurry the latter. I have trouble distinguishing the subject from the other elements, and that’s not a good thing. I also don’t like the placement, with the leaf just a bit too far off center. There’s an odd gap on the right side that could have been easily alleviated had I just composed the image with the leaf scooted over just a bit. A rookie mistake, to be sure, but one that I’m clearly still learning to overcome even after all these years :)

Finally, I don’t like how the withered, dry branch juts down awkwardly from the left side of the leaf. If it was long enough to stick out the top it might work, but as it is…it just feels weird and unsettling.

And so I’ll close with this: I view this picture as an opportunity to learn and grow. The good things? Keep doing them. The things that didn’t quite work? Maybe find a way to avoid them next time. And through it all, just keep taking pictures and enjoying the process.