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

For years one of my favorite types of photos to take at Milford Lake during our annual family vacation is that of a setting sun. Unlike most other shots that one can create during a weekend getaway out in nature, there’s a temporal quality to sunset shots like this–something that you just can’t capture save for a fleeting moment at the end of day and, perhaps, in the early morning if one is so inclined. Each year my sunset pics look a bit different, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this year’s is better than the rest, it definitely shows evidence of refinement based on what I have done before.

I kept things real simple here in terms of gear: Nikon D750, 50mm lens (yes, the same lens that this blog is named after) and 10-stop ND filter. The camera itself was incidental; one could get almost the same shot with any cheap Nikon or Canon from Walmart. Full frame is not required to get a good sunset shot like this. The most important factors here were weather and composition: the former was basically just happenstance and entirely out of my control, but the latter involved understanding where to place the setting sun and the horizon within the frame and only comes with lots of experimentation, self-reflection, and looking at similar shots from other photographers. I have learned over the years that I enjoy sunsets the most when the sun itself is off-center, roughly along one of the vertical third lines, and the horizon roughly bisects the image. Too much foreground or too much sky tends to have a reductive effect on the photo as a whole, and my favorite sunset shots generally end up with more or less equal parts foreground and background.

There’s also two other fun elements in this shot that I just enjoy capturing: a silky-smooth lake surface and the brilliant starburst emanating from the setting sun. The former requires a long exposure (hence the 10-stop ND filter) and the latter requires a small aperture and good timing. If the sun is too high or too low you won’t get the points of light, and neither will they appear if your aperture is too wide which is why mobile phones can’t get shots like this. They are stuck at a fixed aperture usually between f/1.8 and f/2.2.

The result is a sunset shot that I am proud of, and one that does a good job of showing the natural beauty of Milford Lake—and hopefully helps show why I enjoy going there so much with my family each year.

This is one of those shots that’s so simple, so basic, and so easy to capture that it almost feels like cheating. This is not complicated in the least, and no special gear or equipment is required other than a camera, some vegetation, and the setting sun. But when done right, a picture like this can just knock it out of the park and do exactly what you might hope it would do: create some kind of feeling, emotion, or mood for the person who views it.

The basic idea here is super easy: find some kind of plant with a bit of color to it (I like wide blades midsummer of grass or tree leaves in the fall as they are changing colors) and position yourself such that the sun is behind it. Then get out your camera, open up the lens aperture, and start taking pictures. that all there is to it. The bright colors and brilliant light can end up making these types of photos some of my favorites that I have taken over the years. In fact, when my brother Phil and I were walking around on the shores of Milford Lake while some of the younger kids were fishing on the nearby dock, I had this picture in my mind that I had taken seven years prior on the Oklahoma State University campus. (I’m not kidding, I really was thinking of that shot. I really like it, and it was my phone background for a good long while.) When I saw a few blades of green grass that had turned to orange and red, along with the sun lowering on the horizon, I thought it would be a great opportunity to take another similar shot.

I used my D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens but anyone could get this composition with a basic DSLR and 18-55mm kit lens. All I did was lower my point of view to take advantage of the backlighting, focus on the orange leaf on the left, open up my aperture to a decent-but-not-too-wide f/4.8, and fire off a couple of shots. I also played around with my position relative to the leaf, moving in and out just to try some different compositions while also experimenting with different aperture sizes but in the end this simple image just clicked in a way that none of the others really did. I like it a lot, and it’s now my iPad background :) I think this experience, especially in light of all the super close-up insect shots I have been taking lately, is a good reminder that photography doesn’t have to be fancy to be good. Sometimes just something basic and simple is all you need.

Almost every year when my family gets together at Milford Lake, Kansas, I like to go out at least one evening and take a picture of the sunset. Views like this aren’t something I see in my normal daily life in Oklahoma, so it’s fun to be able to try different kids of shots compared to my normal repertoire of bugs, insects, and scenes from Theta Pond on the OSU campus. While most of my family was up at the campfire I stole away for a few minutes to run down to the beach, set up my camera, and see if I could get something maybe a tad different from the similar compositions I had created in previous years. Not that there’s anything wrong with repeating a photo year after year, and I have certainly done just that more than a few times in the past decade or so, but it’s also fun to try something new. Novel, perhaps, or at least novel to me if not to other nature and landscape photographers.

What I eventually came up with was the idea of using my D750, 50mm lens, and 10-stop ND filter to smooth out the water (of course) but also to create a sense of wistful peacefulness in the foreground. Instead of focusing on the treeline with the setting sun in the background, I instead found a chunk of rock sticking up from the water right near the shore and got that nice and sharp even though it meant the background would be a bit blurry. (One of the consequences of a relatively inexpensive lens like the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G is that you sacrifice a small aperture; f/16 is as low as this lens will go, which means super deep focus is kind of out of the question. C’est la vie.) I set my ISO to 100, my shutter speed to 30 seconds, and got this image which is quite unlike most of the other pictures I can recall taking. It looks like the rock is shrouded in a fog or mist, but it’s really just small waves lapping against it as a hushed breeze barely breathed across the surface of the waters.

This was a fun picture to take and one that I hope to revisit in the future, possibly with the light behind me instead of in front of me, but that goes to show that if nothing else this at least gives me some new ideas to try which is always a good thing when it comes to photography :)

Last week I wrote (and spoke) about how the shot of a dragonfly, when compared to a similar picture from seven years prior, was evidence of just how much I have learned in the time between the two. This image, while similar to one that I took a few months ago, isn’t so much an example of what I have learned but how earlier shots can inform later shots. This hummingbird moth is closing in on a white ball of…something? (I’m still not sure what in the world these flower-ish things are, but they must taste good to bees, moths, and other insects.) When I saw the animal flitting from one bulbous protrusion to the next on the shores of Milford Lake, Kansas, I immediately thought of this picture of a similar situation that I took in my very own back yard in April. I knew I didn’t want to re-create the original backyard shot as much as I wanted to use what I learned from it to create something new. I’m not entirely sure it worked, and in the end I think I prefer the original to its more recent counterpart, but the entire process was an exercise in education and personal growth which is what really matters in the end.

What I really wanted to capture in the image you see above is a sense of energy, especially as it relates to light. The original photo from my back yard is evenly lit, which is to say that the entire shot is shrouded in shade. This is great for creating a nice sense of uniformity, but there are other, more creative, ways to use light to elevate an image. That’s what I wanted to do here. The moth you see in this shot was one of several hovering around this patch of lakeside greenery, but I specifically chose to put myself in a position such that I would be more likely to get a picture of one when the sun was behind it. See the transluscent glow on the moth’s wings, the bright colors of its curling proboscis, and the vibrant energy of the white bulb? That’s all due to backlighting, and you won’t find any of this in my photo of a hummingbird moth from April. So in that sense, I consider this image pretty great :)

However, what I didn’t quite nail here was the position of the moth and, as such, the focal point of the composition isn’t quite what I want it to be. The moth is facing slightly away from my camera and, as a result, you can’t see its face or eyes clearly. It’s not a dealbreaker per se, but I do wish I could have gotten this same overall composition but with a better view of the animal’s face. I don’t say this to be self-critical, but just to examine the image and see what I like and don’t like, and then see what I can learn from it.

One of my favorite things to do as a photographer is look back on earlier images and compare them to similar shots that I have taken years down the line. While sometimes embarrassing, particularly when I think about the portraits I used to take in days gone by, it’s also refreshingly illustrative, and even a bit instructive, and if nothing else it’s just fun to see how far I’ve come. (I recommend this to other photographers too: try going through your earlier shots and see what you have learned and how you have improved over the years. It’s really cool.) Such is absolutely the case here.

Back in 2016, not too long after I got a set of close-up filters for my 50mm lens, I took this shot of a dragonfly near the shore of Milford Lake, Kansas:

At the time I was kind of blown away, having never taken a picture quite like this before. I was astonished that an amateur photographer like myself could get an image of a dragonfly with such stunning clarity. And without a true macro lens, no less. I thought I had peaked, but years later I can clearly see just how wrong I was and how much room for growth still remained.

This week’s featured image of a blue dragonfly, which was taken about 200 yards away from where I shot its counter part in 2016, is improved in every possible way. The dragonfly is sharper, the lighting is better, the colors (and thus, the entire composition as a whole) are vastly improved, and overall it has a sense of life and vibrancy that was almost entirely absent in the earlier picture. I don’t say this to downplay the first shot, but to show how fascinating it is to see how much I have learned over the years. It’s something I don’t see too much on a daily basis, but when comparing compositions it becomes clear. And I think what excites me the most is thinking about, seven years from now, just how much I will have hopefully improved over what I can do now.

The journey really is the reward :)