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

Ok I’m going to be honest here: I don’t exactly know what’s happening in this picture. I mean, I get it on a conceptual level but I don’t know any pertinent details. This airplane, the same one from last week’s photo, is spraying a mist of…something…over a field of sorghum. Is it fertilizer? Pesticide? Who knows. (Not me, anyway) All I know for sure is this was a fun photo to take.

This started with me driving from Oklahoma to Kansas, taking small highways and back roads as much as possible in order to see the scenery and have the ability to pull over for a break whenever I want to. As I was going east on Highway 15 I saw this crop duster doing its thing over a field just south of the road, so I pulled over to snap some photos. Ok, a lot of photos. Hundreds of photos. As many as I could given the time I had available, which wasn’t exactly unlimited given that I had places to go and people to see. I used my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, zooming in and out to capture images while keeping a constant f/2.8 aperture to freeze motion and blur the background and foreground ever so slightly. Having never photographed a scene like this before I wasn’t sure it would work, but I think the results turned out great. Certainly much better than I could have expected or hoped for, especially given that I never expected to be photographing a crop duster in the first place :)

As I was going through all my photos trying to pick out my favorites, I settled on this as one of my top three for a couple of reasons. First, the 3/4 view of the plane helps show it as a three-dimensional object compared to the profile view from last week’s shot. Also, I wanted to capture a sense of just how low this airplane was flying, and once you notice its shadow on the sorghum plants you can clearly tell that it’s only a few meters off the field. Certainly not a normal situation for an airplane to be in! Finally, I of course wanted to see the trail of fertilizer (or pesticide, or whatever it is) behind the airplane which clearly convey a sense of motion and energy.

This was an incredibly fun picture to take and a good reminder about keeping your eyes open, looking for photo opportunities when they present themselves, and being prepared with the right gear to get the shot.

I can’t recall a time when I was able to take a picture like this, and I don’t imagine I will have the opportunity again anytime soon. It also shows the importance of preparedness, and also of simply having the dumb luck to be in the right place at the right time. I shot this when I was driving along Highway 15 in the middle of Kansas, and spotted a small yellow plane flying low over a field with a cloud of fertilizer billowing out behind it. It was a crop duster! I had only seen these once or twice in my life and I was thrilled to get the chance to witness one in action up close and personal. Thankfully I brought pretty much my entire camera kit with me on this particular trip so I pulled into a driveway, got out my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and started firing away. I took hundreds of photos as this airplane went back and forth across a field of sorghum and came away with a three favorites which I will be posting here on Weekly Fifty.

I wanted to start my series with this picture even though the crop duster is barely distinguishable from any other small single-engine aircraft. If you look closely you can see a bar across the middle just below the driver’s window which sprays fertilizer, but other than that it looks like pretty much any other normal yellow airplane. What I like about this image is that it shows a scene that is pretty different from what you might expect. Here’s this yellow plane clearly aiming for the ground as if coming in for a landing, but there’s no runway in sight. A long undulating road is perpendicular to the plane and there’s also plenty of power lines to crash into, and yet, this plane is diving headlong into the greenery despite having nowhere to go. Clearly this is not a normal situation!

Though I didn’t really plan this image–it’s one of a few dozen that I fired off in rapid succession as the plane descended–I like how perfectly all the elements come together to form a compelling composition: The cloudless sky, the empty road, the red barn, the rolling hills, and the trees in the background all serve to form a scene that is distinctly Middle America. I like the profile shot of the airplane and its position at the intersection of the top third and right third of the image, and the sense of anticipation as it is on its way to fill the empty space on the left. The 1/6000 shutter speed made it possible to freeze every bit of motion while still conveying a clear sense of activity, and shooting at f/2.8 resulted in a subtle background blur as well.

I’m extraordinarily pleased at this moment of photographic serendipity, and I’m excited to show the next two images in this series as well.

Spoiler alert: Over the next few weeks you’re going to see a lot of photos of wind turbines here on Weekly Fifty. I recently drove from Oklahoma to Nebraska, having not made that trip for a while due to the pandemic, and of course I brought my camera gear with me to take some shots along the way. I really enjoy taking back roads and two-lane highways as opposed to interstates because the scenery is so much more interesting, and because you can pull over almost any time you want to take photos or just stretch your legs. And sometimes you come across a scene like this that’s just begging to be photographed.

One thing I’ve learned about taking pictures of these wind turbines is that you have to find a way to put them in context or give the audience a sense of scale. You can’t just take a snapshot of a turbine and call it a day. You have to give your viewers some way to place the subject in a physical space so they know how massive these things really are. Trouble is, it’s really tricky to actually pull that off. This photo here is one solution, and while it’s not perfect I do think it helps capture the feeling of just how tall these things tower above the fields and hills of the midwestern prairie.

There’s a couple key elements in this picture that help it be a bit more effective at conveying scale. First, the foreground. I positioned myself (along with my Nikon D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens) in such a way as to have those large round bales in the lower-left corner and slightly out of focus as well, thanks to the depth of field afforded when shooting 120mm at f/2.8. Those foreground elements give the picture a sense of depth and perspective, and without them the image would feel kind of empty.

Next, the background. While I had very little control over this, I was glad that I could capture a scene in which there were dozens of wind turbines receding away on the far side of the hill. When you see how tall the turbine in the center is, and then see many more turbines behind it, you start to get a sense for the true size of this power-generation operation. It feels like these turbines go on for miles and miles which, if you have ever seen a field like this, actually is the case. This wouldn’t happen without the downward slope behind the subject and the many turbines behind it, and it was really cool to be able to capture this in a photograph.

Finally, the subject itself. The gleaming white turbine just left of center is the one that caught my eye initially as I was driving down Highway 15. It was facing the road as well as the sun, and while I could have cropped this image to make the subject smack-dab in the center of the image, I left it just off to the side a bit so as to give the wide-open blue skies and clouds a bit of room to breathe within the frame. All in all I’m quite pleased with how this picture turned out, and if you ever get the chance to see a scene like this in person I hope you’re able to pull over, get out your camera, and take a few shots to help remember it.

This picture looks a lot like the one I shared two weeks ago, but there’s some interesting differences too and a few things that, in my mind, elevate it above the other one. First of all, it doesn’t exactly follow the same compositional rules in that the subject it not illuminated against a bright spot of light in the background. There are lots of bright spots of course, but it’s not a dark background with one giant blob of light in the middle to accentuate the subject. Instead, in this picture, there’s a couple distinct elements that all come together to make the complete composition:

• Foreground elements such as the green leaves
• The subject itself, with a reddish hue to offer contrast with the green leaves
• White spots in the background, which accentuate the subject
• The very dark background

These four things work in unison and help create a picture that is much more interesting and compelling than if any of them were not present. Also, I shot this photo with a +2 close-up filter so I could get just a little close to the seed pod and make the background spots of light much larger too. Finally, you might notice dark spots on most of the circles of light which almost look like sun spots for any astronomers out there. In fact those are just bits of dust and debris on the front of my lens, and a reminder that I really need to clean that thing every once in a while :)

There’s a good photo in here somewhere, but I’m not sure how to coax it out.

I shot this on my way to work one rainy morning in late August when I stumbled across this scene quite by accident. I biked to work while it was raining so my wife could have the car to get the kids to school and then drive herself to work. (Our other vehicle was in the repair shop getting worked on.) When I got to this bridge the rain had let up a bit, and I noticed this maroon umbrella just sitting there at the edge of the pavement exactly as you see here. Why did someone leave an open umbrella on the sidewalk? Were they going to return to come and get it? Should I take it with me so as not to knowingly leave litter lying around? I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, but what I did know is that the scene might make an interesting photograph.

I had my D500 and 50mm lens with me so I parked my bike, got my camera out of my backpack, and composed what I thought might be an interesting picture. I only spent about 30 seconds on it since I had to get to work and didn’t really have time to consider all the normal elements of exposure and composition that I normally would have, and I think that’s one reason this image isn’t quite as compelling as it might be. A better photographer might have found a more interesting angle or a unique way to take a picture of this umbrella, but this was all I could do given the short amount of time I was working with.

I shot it at f/1.8 to get a bit of background blur, and I should have moved myself much closer to the umbrella too. This image is cropped quite a bit: the original has a Chili’s restaurant sign on the right side and a lot more sidewalk in the foreground too but again, I didn’t have much time to work with. I don’t mean to be so negative about this image because I do think it’s decent, but mostly this was a learning experience for me and a good reminder that it helps to be prepared in case a photo opportunity presents itself. If I hadn’t thought to bring my camera to work I wouldn’t have any picture here, and a halfway decent shot is better than no shot at all.