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

You can thank the Winter Olympics for this one. This past February my kids, as well as my wife and I, were caught up in the excitement of the various competitions especially the luge, the bobsled, the speed skating, and of course the snowboarding. We had a couple of snow days in the mix too which meant the kids were home from school and, as a bonus, I was able to burn through a ton of wood in our fireplace. (Some winters we don’t burn any wood at all since it’s so warm here in Oklahoma!) On this particular evening our boys were ready for bed early having taking their baths, brushed their teeth, and put on their PJs so they spent a little while just watching the fire before the Olympics came on and then, about a half hour later, heading for bed.

The kiddos were a little squirrelly so I must confess this image is just a bit staged in that I had to ask them to hold still for just a few seconds so I could take their picture, but overall I think it captures the general essence of the scene fairly well. Normally they’re not so quiet and serene but they knew I was trying to get a picture so they complied without too much fuss, and I was able to get just a couple of shots with my D750 + 50mm lens before they started jumping around and tackling each other. This was a bit unique in that I used my little Gorilla Pod tripod so I could shoot with a longer shutter of 1/6 second, hence the motion trails in the fireplace, and normally there’s no way I would ever get a decent image of my kids with such a slow shutter! I shot at f/2.8 to get a shallow depth of field which, compared to my other pictures shot at f/4, added a nice soft touch to the scene.

You might also notice a weirdly-colored blotch on the right side where I had to remove some pictures of my kids’ faces, along with their names, which were prominently displayed in a frame. I don’t like to show their faces here on Weekly Fifty so I used Lightroom to remove that part of the image and while I probably should have used Photoshop to make the edits a little less blatantly obvious, I just didn’t want to take the time to get too detailed. I hope it doesn’t mess with the overall impact of the image too much, but it’s the kind of thing I’m guessing you won’t see unless it’s specifically pointed out to you. #fingerscrossed

Isn’t it weird how the seasons work? In January it can be so cold that you long for warmer times of summer, but then in summer your mind can do a one-eighty and wish it were cold. In general I prefer warmer months to their winter counterparts, but at least here in Oklahoma we don’t often get buried under snow when it’s cold! (Such was not the case back in Minnesota…)

I shot this picture on an unseasonably warm day in January when it was about 50 degrees and felt like heaven. I was so thrilled with the nice weather that I went for a walk just to get out and be in nature for a bit instead of the office, and as luck would have it along the way I ran into my department head who I think was doing the very same thing! I had my X100F camera, still very new to me at the time, and was thrilled to be able to take pictures in public places without feeling too self-conscious about my big camera–something with which I have always struggled when using my Nikon DSLRs. The wide lens on the X100F makes it ideal for casual street-type photos like this one, and I used the Classic Chrome film simulation because I have found I really like the colors it gives me especially when shooting outdoors.

To get this image I sat on the ground, composed my shot, set my camera to 8fps drive mode, and waited for a biker to come across the scene. (Since it’s a college campus I knew I wouldn’t have to wait too long!) A few minutes later I saw this person approaching and as soon as they entered the scene I held down the shutter button, which resulted in about a dozen images taken in rapid succession such that I was able to pick this one picture out of the lot and feel really happy about it. I like how the cyclist is positioned in the space between the bell tower and the tree on the right, and also how the tree on the left gets close to (but doesn’t quite encroach on) the tower. Everything, as Sam Abell would say, occupies its own space within the frame and it’s one of those rare shots that came out looking pretty much exactly how I imagined when I set out to take it.

It seems as though every year, usually just once, we get hit with some kind of ice storm here in Oklahoma. It can range from mild to severe, and while it’s usually not enough to fell trees or topple structures, schools generally shut down and drivers tend to avoid the roads and my kids and I invariably end up outside just experiencing the change in weather. That’s what happened here, on a chilly Wednesday afternoon in mid February when ice from the previous day caused both OSU and the public schools to close halfway through the day. The boys, ages four and six, were itching to get outside so we bundled up and just spent a while messing around in the yard.

They were fascinated at the way the whole world was coated in ice, and it was fun to see them experience it as much as they possibly could. They ate icicles and whacked tree limbs with sticks and shovels to see what would happen and hear the sounds of ice clinking. We went to the back yard and they marveled (I’m not kidding. They really were amazed) at the way our deck chairs and swingset were encased in ice, and they wanted to take their gloves off and feel every surface before running on to the next fixture. I had my Fuji X100f with me and took several pictures of them romping around on the ice, and also shot a few close-up images of nature just to see what would happen.

The 23mm lens on the X100F focuses closer than my Nikon lenses (natively, that is. My 50mm Nikon lens with close-up filters gets much better macro shots) so I was able to get some pictures of flower buds, tree leaves, and other flora in a way that I don’t normally get to see. Most were kind of unremarkable but I liked the way this one turned out, with a bit of foreground to add some depth to the image instead of the focal point itself being right front and center. I shot this at f/2.8 because when the 23mm lens is stopped down clear to f/2 it gets a little soft when shooting close-up, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out even though the colors aren’t quite what I would like.

Confession time, folks: on my X100F I have been shooting almost exclusively in JPEG mode as opposed to RAW, and using the Classic Chrome film simulation because nine times out of ten I just like how those colors look when I’m taking pictures of my kids. For this picture I should have either shot in RAW so I could tweak the colors a bit more or used a different film simulation, but to be honest I’m not even sure what that would be (I think the camera has about a dozen built-in simulations but I’ve only used a couple of them) and I didn’t want to spend five minutes fiddling with the camera. I took a few shots and quickly put the camera away so I could get back to what really matters: playing with my kids :)

This is not the first time I have used a picture of a squirrel here on Weekly Fifty, and it won’t be the last either. I’ve realized over the years that I really like photographing these little rodents and even though the overall nature of many of the pictures is kind of similar (i.e. a squirrel sitting or eating or both) it’s fun to actually go out and get the shots. Kind of like how some people go to Starbucks (or if your up north, Caribou Coffee) and order the same thing each morning: it’s not fancy, but it’s familiar and it’s something you just enjoy doing. That’s kind of me when it comes to squirrels, especially the ones at Theta Pond because they are a little less skittish around people than most wild animals.

When I shot this it was a particularly warm day in mid-February and I brought my D750 + 70-200mm lens to campus simply because I knew it would be a nice day out and I figured I would get the chance to go out and shoot some pictures with it. Sometime in the early afternoon I did just that–I went on a five-minute walk around the pond with my camera, taking pictures of squirrels and maybe a duck or two. Nothing fancy, but it was fun, and that’s what matters to me. I also tried to pay attention to the types of shots I was getting, and look for squirrels that were doing something interesting or positioned in a way that made the photo more compelling to look at.

As I went through my pics I liked this one the best because something was actually happening in it, as opposed to a squirrel just standing around. I caught this little fella in the middle of a snack and it looks like he paused a bit to let me take his picture, though more likely he was spooked by the giant lens pointed in his direction. I like that it’s kind of a 3/4 angle shot where he’s not fully sideways but not fully…uh…looking right at me either, which was more visually compelling than some of the other pictures I ended up taking.

I shot this at 200mm, I think f/2.8 or f/4, which gave me a nice shallow depth of field while keeping the focus squarely on the squirrel. I don’t think I would have had a snowball’s chance in Houston of getting this shot with my Nifty Fifty :)

This is a great example of a picture I’d never be able to get with my usual setup of a DSLR and 50mm lens. On a rather warm date in late February I took my kids to the playground at a local elementary school while my wife stayed back to get some work done, and at this particular location one of the boys’ favorite toys is a spinner device kind of like the old sit-and-spin toys from the late 80’s. (Full disclosure: it’s also one of my favorite toys at this playground!) It’s really just made for one person but I asked my four-year-old if he would mind attempting to help me get a picture, and the result is what you see here. It’s not perfect and there’s some things I wish I could have composed differently, but it’s hard to juggle a camera, a playground spinner, and a little kid all at the same time so I guess I can’t complain :)

I took this with my Fuji X100F which had a couple things going for it that would have made the shot nearly impossible with a DSLR. The X100F is designed to be used with the rear LCD screen for composing and focusing, whereas on most DSLR cameras the rear screen focusing is much slower and less reliable than the viewfinder due to the common implementation of contrast-detect autofocus as opposed to phase-detect through the viewfinder. The size of the camera made it much easier to work with as well, and I was able to shoot one-handed while I held my boy with my other arm. Finally, the wider 23mm (35mm equivalent) field of view on the X100F made a picture like this possible whereas shooting with a 50mm lens would have resulted in basically only getting a single foot in the shot.

I knew I wanted a slow shutter speed to get motion trails, but any slower than 1/30 would have been nearly impossible to get a sharp picture and any longer would have given me motion trails that were too short. 1/30 worked just fine, but even then it took several tries to get this shot because my son was kind of fussy (wouldn’t you be?) and the constant shifting between light and shadow as we spun around did tend to confuse the focusing system on the camera. I like how it turned out though and it gave me some ideas for other shots I might try in the future.