I was recently interviewed on The Beginner Photography Podcast about my Weekly Fifty photo blog, and I wanted to share the interview with my readers in case you’re interested in learning a bit more about me, the site, and my approach to photography. Special thanks to Raymond Hatfield for asking me to be on! I thoroughly enjoyed this interview and I hope you do as well.
The Path
I’ave always had an affinity for pictures where there is some kind of road, path, or track leading the viewer’s gaze off into the horizon. I’ve put a few like this up on Weekly Fifty over the years, and something about this kind of scene just feels like…possibilities. I dunno. It’s kind of comforting to come across a scene like this in real life, snap a picture, and have the image be a fairly accurate representation of the time and place that you experienced in person. That’s what I have here, and I hope it gives you, the viewer, a similar feeling.
This is a path at a park not far from our home, and I shot this while I was out playing frisbee disc golf with my two boys on a hot August morning. We have a few spots for disc golf here in town but none with this level of shade or this easy to get to, and that makes it an ideal place to while away the hours with our boys especially during the summer. Most of the time when we go here I don’t bring my camera but on this particular day I figured I would take my D750 and 50mm lens just for fun and see if I could get a couple good shots. This image wasn’t difficult to capture and there’s nothing especially noteworthy about it, but that’s not really the point. I had fun taking this shot and I learned a few things in the process, which is good enough for me :)
So what do you need to take a picture like this? A small aperture, a fast shutter or a tripod, and a point of view that’s kind of close to the ground. If you use a wide aperture like f/4, f/2.8, or greater you run the risk of having the foreground or background out of focus due to a shallow depth of field, and most lenses aren’t quite as sharp at wide apertures either. I shot this at f/8 to avoid both of those issues and also knelt down to get a more interesting angle, took just a couple shots, and then went back to tossing frisbees with my kids. This was the kind of picture I didn’t want to over-think, and I’m glad I didn’t. Maybe I could have gotten a different (possibly better?) image with a lot more time and tinkering, but that would have been time I didn’t spend with my kids. And that’s a tradeoff I didn’t want to make.
DYNIX
This picture is a bit of a departure for me. Normally I like to shoot subjects and scenes with lots of colors, but here it’s mostly just earthtones: browns, greens, and blacks. Looking at this image reminds me of the old Dynamic UNIX system (DYNIX for short) that my local public library used to use in the 1990’s as the tried-and-true card catalog slowly faded into obsolescence. Maybe this could be the logo for a Magnolia UNIX system (MAGNIX for short)? Note to any aspiring OS designers: contact me for licensing details :)
Anyway, this shot is fairly simple but it actually took a bit more planning and preparation than you might think. First, the subject: a magnolia seed pod midway through its life cycle. It’s not super interesting to look at without any bright red seeds poking out, and initially I was not going to take this picture at all. Then I thought about how I could frame the subject against the background in such a way as to make the seed pod stand out and be a bit more interesting to look at. I took a few shots at f/1.8 using the just-blur-everything approach but, as I expected, depth of field was too shallow and the seed pod suffered from a severe lack of sharpness. I stopped down to f/2.8 which mean the spots of light in the background weren’t as pronounced, but the tradeoff in sharpness was worth it to me. I then thought about where to position the subject (or, rather, where to position myself since I was not keen on moving this branch with one hand while trying to get a picture with the other).
My first thought was to repeat the idea from last week: put the seed pod against a bright spot of white light in the background. That idea didn’t really work out too well, as it left the viewer with a bit of a feeling of unease and uncertainty about what to actually look at. Then I realized I could put the subject against a dark part of the background, thus giving the image some complementary elements. The white spots of light on the left serve to guide the viewer’s eyes to the seed pod just to the right of center. It’s a more complete composition this way, with the different shades of green and yellow serving each other rather than competing with one another. I’m curious to return to this scene after a few days and see how it’s changed, and maybe I’ll even try to take another image of the same seed pod after a while to see how it looks after some time has passed.
Sun Spots
This picture was a bit of an exercise of pulling something from nothing. Or, rather, something from very little. I was walking near Theta Pond with my camera on a sunny afternoon in mid July, determined to find a photo opportunity even though I kept coming up with nothing. With Spring firmly in the rearview mirror much of the bright colors and unique sights around the pond just aren’t what they used to be, but I did eventually find this patch of flowers not far from where I have taken similar photos in the past. I didn’t have my close-up filters on hand which means it was tricky to compose a photo that felt interesting or compelling, and I tried the usual tricks like just shooting down from above or straight-on from the side.
I took a couple snapshots but nothing I would really be proud of, and then I realized I could take some inspiration from similar images I have shared in months past. By looking slightly upwards at this yellow flower I could put it against a brilliant background, and suddenly we were off to the races. The variables that mattered to me most were aperture (to control depth of field, not to get a fast shutter speed) and composition. I went back and forth between f/1.8 and f/2.8, preferring the former for background blur but the latter for subject sharpness. Something wasn’t really clicking though, no matter what I did. It just wasn’t turning out to be an interesting image, and I wasn’t sure why.
Then it hit me: the center of the flower was dark and I was framing the shot so it was against a dark part of the background. I realized the obvious solution to my problem, Like Bill Murray when he finds out Dr. Leo Marvin is vacationing in New Hampshire, and simply repositioned myself such that the flower was in the middle of the bright blue sky poking through the trees.
This isn’t a complicated shot, but it does show the importance of taking a few minutes to consider various compositional elements when getting a photo. I’m usually not one to give advice, but I do think it’s worth thinking about these sorts of things a bit more even if it means slowing down or taking fewer photos. The next time you pull out your phone or camera to snap a couple shots, make sure you’re considering all elements of the shot and not just the first thing that comes to mind. Chances are, you’ll end up with pictures you like a lot more as a result :)
Cabin Six Sunset
Each year in June or July you’re likely to see a picture like this here on Weekly Fifty. It’s usually some kind of sunset or nature photo, and it’s always taken at Acorn’s Resort in Milford, Kansas where my family has gone for vacation for the past ten years. Every year I try to find either a new type of picture to take, or a new way of taking a familiar type of image, and the latter was certainly the case this time. I brought a slew of camera gear with me but since most of our time was spent visiting with family, most of my pictures are relatives: siblings, parents, nieces, and nephews. There was one evening when my brother’s wife tipped me off about the sunset, so I decided it was worth a quick break from talking around a bowl of chips and queso. And she was right: this one was awesome.
I grabbed my tripod, Nikon D750, 50mm lens, and 10-stop ND filter and ran out behind the cabin several of our families were all sharing together. The sun was rapidly setting so I didn’t have much time to try various locations and vantage points, so I just decided to set up my camera in one single spot and see what I could get. I chose a location just up the hill between the cabin and the shoreline, switched to manual focus, metered the scene, screwed on the ND filter, and took a 30-second exposure. I liked what I got but I adjusted the view just a bit, took another exposure, and repeated that process just a couple more times before the sun went down over the horizon.
I’ve taken a lot of sunset shots over the years, but this just might be one of my favorites. I like virtually everything about this image: The brilliant colors, the rays bursting outwards from the sun, the lens flare on the right, the still surface of the water, the sharp treeline…you get the point. Everything about this image just worked, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity, the gear, and the photographic knowledge to make this shot. This image is not possible with a mobile phone for several reasons:
- Mobile phones have a static aperture, which means you cannot get sunbursts like what you see here.
- Mobile phones do not have the ability to shoot with ND filters, though there are some third-party companies that make clip-on options. These are nowhere near the quality of a proper screw-on ND filter like what you can put on a dedicated camera lens.
- The field of view on most mobile phones is between 25-30 degrees, which means the sun in this image would be much smaller and the scene would not have the same sense of warmth and personality.
I’m not disparaging mobile phones here, I’m just saying that as great as they are in 2021 they still have some important limitations. And sometimes it helps to get a dedicated camera and spend some time learning how to use it to get the shots you want :)