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

As I mentioned in my photo commentary last week, I don’t usually schedule specific pictures for certain days just like my photo from last week I’m making an exception here. I didn’t take this picture so I could use it as the first image of 2020, but as I was looking through my image collection I thought it might be an appropriate way to ring in the new year. So here you go :)

I shot this back in the fall of 2019 in mid afternoon on a sunny day, and the composition was a bit different for me because of how the light hits the flower. Typically I don’t use backlighting very much but I thought it would work pretty well in this case, and think it makes the resulting image look a bit more interesting and dynamic as a result. If the sun were behind me it would have illuminated the entire flower evenly, but as such I like the white glow around the edge and, as a bonus, the fun highlights behind it in the background. Aperture selection on my 50mm lens here was a little tricky since I knew I wanted a nice blown-out background, but I also wanted the flower to be fully in focus and f/1.8 would have made this almost impossible. F/4 seemed like a bit too far the other way, so I compromised with f/3.3.

I think it worked out fairly well though I must say the background, while being bright and colorful, is a bit too busy and cluttered for my taste. In any case I hope this flower helps bring a smile and sense of optimism to you as you start 2020, and here’s to a year full of new life and new possibilities :)

Cheers!

First of all…Merry Christmas! I hope this day, and this season, finds you and your family happy and well, and may you be given peace and love as we celebrate the birth of Christ. John 3:16 says that “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, that whoever believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” How incredible to think that the baby born in a manger over two millennia ago, because there was no room for his family at the inn in Bethlehem, would one day be the savior of all mankind. Praise God for His saving grace, and for cleansing us from sin by the blood of his own son.

I usually don’t plan my pictures here on Weekly Fifty to coincide with any particular time of year, but for this one I did want to make it a little special due to the nature of the picture. It has nothing to do with Christmas, but this picture does have a great deal of meaning for me personally. Years ago one of the first pictures I took with my Nikon D200 and 50mm lens which made me realize that yes, even a novice like me could produce interesting photographs, was a mockingbird sitting on a shrub. It was the first photo I ever used here on Weekly Fifty (well, technically the second, but the first was just a snapshot with my Panasonic CZ7 pocket camera) and I’ve often wished I could go back and re-shoot that image knowing what I know now.

Not long ago I had that very opportunity.

I was walking across campus with a friend of mine on the way to a meeting when I came upon a very similar scene from that shot I posted more than six years ago: a mockingbird hanging out on a shrub. I didn’t have my camera with me but I took note of the scene, and the next day I brought my D7100 and 50mm lens on the off-chance that the bird would still be there. And it was :)

I tried to be a little more intentional this time around, but as with all wildlife photography there wasn’t much about the situation that I could control. Still, I took note of things like lighting, background, f/stop, and even background elements like students walking past, to create what I think is a far superior image. I shot some at f/2.8 and then a few more at f/1.8, moving myself around the hedge slowly and carefully so as not to startle the bird. It regarded me with mild curiosity and hopped around a bit, but didn’t seem to mind my presence too much. I was really hoping to catch the light in its eye, which I was thankfully able to do once it turned its head just so, and I also moved myself such that the lights coming through the trees in the background would create a nice pleasing blur.

This was a really fun shot to take and I’m so glad I got to essentially revisit one of my favorite scenes from so many years ago. It was an enjoyable example of how much I’ve learned, but also a good reminder of how much I still have left to figure out :)

Merry Christmas to all of you, and I hope you had a good 2019. Here’s to 2020 and many years beyond.

To wrap up 2019* I wanted to take a look back at the past year, and even farther, and talk about where things with Weekly Fifty have been, where they are now, and where I see them going in the new year and beyond.

*I know we still have almost two weeks left in the year, but I figure this is close enough :)

Sometimes I really wish I had a proper macro lens. There aren’t too many occasions on which it would be useful, but this was definitely one of them. I made do with my usual 50mm lens and close-up filters, but good gravy I think an actual macro lens would have been so much better! Maybe someday :) In the meantime I have fun with my cheapo close-up filters and I do enjoy getting shots like this, if nothing else for the sheer challenge of it all.

The sun was going down one evening early in November and I had just come from inside the house with a garbage bag full of trash that was bound for the bin, but I stopped short when I saw this wasp sitting on the black lid. He was just sort of minding his own business and didn’t seem interested in stinging anyone, so I ran inside and grabbed my D7100, which already had my 50mm lens attached, screwed on a +10 filter, and ran back (though tiptoeing the last few yards) to see if I could get a shot of this little bug before he flew away. I didn’t know how long I had to take the shot so I tried to act quickly, and thankfully the results were decent enough when it was all over.

I don’t often use my +10 filter because the depth of field is just too unwieldy, but I knew that for a shot like this it was going to give me a lot better results than a +4 filter. I also don’t like using wide apertures with a +10 filter because, again, depth of field. But because there wasn’t much sunlight left, and because I was shooting with my D7100 and not my D750 (and, hence, couldn’t raise the ISO very much without the picture becoming mired in digital noise) I ended up shooting at f/4. In fact, I shot this scene in Manual as opposed to Aperture Priority because I wanted to make sure I was getting the precise results I was hoping for. My final exposure settings were 50mm, f/4, 1/125 second, ISO 400, a little energon, and a lot of luck.

I used Live View as well, which is super unwieldy on the D7100, but it was the only way I could be sure of getting anything close to in focus. I knew I wanted the eye to be as sharp as possible so that was my main goal, but this was made even more tricky since the wasp wouldn’t hold still and kept on crawling, slowly, around the textured trash can lid. I wish the lighting would have been just a bit better but in general I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, and it was fun to get the chance to use my (very limited) macro gear for something a bit different than I usually shoot.

I’m not really sure what to think about this one. On one hand, it’s kind of a neat picture of a red leaf in the middle of a sea of yellow and orange, but on the other hand it really wasn’t anything special when I shot the photo. It was just a plant I happened to walk by on campus one day, and since I had my camera and 85mm f/1.8 lens I figured I might as well try to take a picture. I knew I wanted the red leaf to be sharp and focused, but it was really tricky to nail down because of a stiff breeze that kept confounding matters.

I usually just shoot through the viewfinder on my DSLRs because it just works well, and I don’t need a live histogram or focus peaking or other benefits that you get when shooting Live View. Not to mention Live View on my D7100 (which I used to take this picture) is pretty spotty. It’s slow to activate and the screen has a noticeable jelly effect where the image kind of wobbles around, much like you would find on an old cell phone. Which kind of makes sense considering the D7100 came out in 2013 :)

Anyway, I did actually need Live View here because nailing focus was so tricky. With all the various leaves in the picture swaying back and forth my camera had trouble nailing and locking focus. I switched to Live View, nailed focus as best I could, and fired off a few frames. If you zoom in really close you’ll see that the red leaf is juuuuuust a little blurry but it’s nothing that would ruin the image, and in the end I got a picture that I’m pretty happy with despite a few imperfections.