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

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.

Something isn’t quite right here.

At first glance this might seem like a picture of a frozen river at the bottom of a canyon, but then you might notice the trees lining the rim on the left side of the picture. If it were a river those trees would be a lot smaller, which stands to reason since the withered branches and grasses on the right side would need to be much smaller too. You might also, upon further inspection, notice the prominence of trash in the picture–wrappers, bags, cardboard, and other sundry items that show evidence of a much more mundane and, I might say, boring scene.

What you’re looking at is actually just a ditch that flows from a culvert beneath the road I take to get to work each day. Here’s the same location a few days later on my way home on a much warmer day:

Weird how much of a difference there is, isn’t it? What’s actually just a lowly ditch becomes something else entirely when photographed at the right time, from the right angle, with the right exposure settings, and even when it’s processed in such a way so as to highlight different things based on what the photographer intended. And for me, all this just goes to show that you can take something entirely ordinary and make an interesting photo with a little creativity.

As I often do I initially disregarded the very idea of taking a picture at this location because I literally go past it almost every single day either in my car or on my bike. It’s just not interesting at all, and yet, when I saw the frozen water I thought I could maybe, possibly, hopefully get a picture that was worth looking at. The sun was just starting to come up so I didn’t have much light to work with, but I set my aperture to f/1.8 and let my camera calculate a shutter of 1/90 and ISO of 2500, which almost made the whole scene feel like it’s in mid-afternoon. I shot a couple images at smaller apertures but I liked the depth of field at f/1.8 and I think it lends the scene a bit more of a majestic feel than it otherwise might have–if majestic is even a word that can be applied to a tiny frozen runoff stream.

I also removed a couple bits of garbage in Lightroom just because…well, because it’s my picture and I can do what I want :) I thought they detracted from the rest of the image, though what I really should have done is actually remove them when I was taking the picture. It would have made for a more pleasing image and helped clean things up a bit too. Hmm. Now I think I’m going to do just that the next time I bike past here.

Good morning everyone,

I wanted to do something a bit different today and fill you in on a couple of things that have been on my mind regarding this blog. But first, lest you think otherwise, know that Weekly Fifty is not going anywhere. I have no plans to stop doing the blog any time soon but I do have a couple of changes that I will be making and as a result I wanted to let you know what might be different in the coming weeks, months, and years.

When I started Weekly Fifty on March 8, 2013, I had been interested in digital photography for about a year and I realized that unless I used my camera regularly I wouldn’t exercise the creative muscles I needed to in order to improve. I tried a couple online forums with challenges, daily/weekly image posts, and other such avenues for accountability but none of them really fit my style. I settled on the idea of doing a weekly photo blog because it was just the right amount of commitment I could handle given that my wife and I had a toddler running around at home along with work and school commitments. (I was getting my Master’s degree at the time as well, which means I didn’t have a lot of spare time!)

I also only had one lens at the time, a 50mm f/1.8, which I still use to this day. Because of these constraints, Weekly Fifty was born and continues mostly unchanged to this day. And oh my goodness what a fun journey it has been, thanks in no small part to the incredible community of commenters who take time to leave thoughts, feedback, questions, and other input every single week. I don’t know if I can quite convey how much I appreciate the thoughts of all of you who choose to share them, but just know that it’s your input that really does keep this blog going. I don’t know if I would have the personal sense of drive to do it otherwise, and your comments mean so, so much.

Thank you. Thank you. And thank you :)

So what’s with the changes? Well, the original goal of Weekly Fifty was to help me improve my photography and I can say, without doubt or hesitation, that it has absolutely done just that. I’m kind of horrified to look back on some of those early posts and see how bad I was at creating compelling compositions, using light and framing to showcase subjects, and even just simple things like manipulating aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to get the pictures I was looking for.

I hope it doesn’t sound conceited to say that I’m a much better photographer now than I was five years ago, though along with that is also a realization of just how much I don’t yet know and understand about photography. The more I learn the more I figure out that I don’t know, and I hope to continue improving until either my fingers or my cameras finally give out. Which hopefully won’t be for a very, very long time.

Along the way I have picked up a lot of new gear as well, and the more I use it the more I feel like I want to showcase some of the images here on the blog. But since I’ve limited Weekly Fifty to just the 50mm lens, I have to go out of my way just to use that one piece of gear in order to meet the constraints of the blog. I’ve taken images I really like with my other lenses such as my 70-200, my 85, and even my new Fuji X100f with its fixed 23mm lens, but I can’t share them here because they’re not 50mm focal lengths.

Therefore I have decided to shift gears a little bit and post images here on the blog that I take with any of the cameras and lenses I own. I’ll still use the 50mm lens of course, but I have found that I enjoy using other focal lengths too and I’d like to showcase those pictures here as well. I’m not changing the name of the blog but it will become kind of irrelevant since it won’t be limited to just a 50mm lens, but the idea will still be the same: one picture each week, posted at 1am CST on Wednesday morning, along with audio commentary.

So here’s to many more weeks, months, and years of Weekly Fifty. The name and format won’t change, but the pictures might look a little different, and I hope that’s OK with you. I’m excited for the future, and I’m so glad to have you along for the ride.

-Simon

My kids have a habit of calling rodents and squirrels by the name “Peanut” ever since reading the Magic Tree House books where the two protagonists, Jack and Annie, adopt a mouse by that name. (Turns out the mouse is much more than meets the eye, but you’d have to read the books to find out why.) Hence the name of this week’s picture which is really just a quick snapshot I happened to fire off before this squirrel scampered off to find food, shelter, or maybe just a playmate elsewhere on campus.

I often talk about the benefits of having your camera with you and here’s a prime example of why it matters so much. In the four and a half years I’ve been at my current position at OSU I’ve seen squirrels wander outside on the ledge of my third-floor office maybe a half-dozen times. It’s just not something that happens very often, and when it does I always like to pause what I’m doing and just sort of watch the little creatures do what they do. It’s a fun little distraction to see them up close, and they usually just stick around for ten or 15 seconds before going back to whatever it was that they were doing.

When I took this I had my D7100 + 50mm lens with me and even though there are two panes of glass between me and the squirrel (with about four inches of space between the panes) I was able to get a fairly decent image. I didn’t have time to do much in the way of composition but I knew I wanted to get his (her?) eye in the shot so I crouched down low, put my aperture at f/2.8, and focused right on the eye with the hope of getting a nice sharp shot. There was a ton of glare from the window in the original RAW file but nothing that a little Lightroom editing couldn’t fix–mostly by adjusting the Highlights/Shadows/Lights/Darks sliders.

It might be a while before this opportunity presents itself again and if so, I’m happy to have gotten this shot while I was able to. It’s fun to try things like this (I almost didn’t even reach for my camera, thinking there’s no way I could get a good picture) but I’m glad I went for it anyway.

I also want to note that this picture marks five years of doing this Weekly Fifty blog. Five years. I must admit that when I set out to do this blog so long ago I had no idea what was in store at all, and the entire time my goal has been simple: I wanted to use this blog as a way of holding myself accountable for taking pictures on a regular basis. Has it done that? Absolutely. But it’s turned in to so much more, with a fantastic group of followers and commenters who have such nice things to say both here and on other social media platforms. (Mostly Instagram, though I try to keep the Facebook page updated too.) I can say with certainty that I am a better photographer now than when I started, and I appreciate all the comments, tips, kind words, and helpful suggestions so many of you have left for me over the past five years. I’m excited for the next five years and I’m so thankful to have all of you along for the ride :)

On November 17, 2011, a small four-person airplane carrying Oklahoma State University women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke along with his assistant Miranda Serna crashed in Perry County, Arkansas, killing the two individuals along with the pilot, Olin Branstetter and his wife Paula. I remember the incident mostly because I was taking a graduate class here at OSU at the time and one of my fellow students was on the basketball team, which gave the tragedy a more personal connotation than it otherwise might have. The days and weeks after the crash were difficult for many people on campus especially since it was almost exactly ten years after another plane crash took the lives of ten individuals on the men’s basketball team, whose lives are celebrated each year at OSU’s annual Remember the Ten Run.

In any tragedy such as this we have to figure out a way of going forwards with our lives while also memorializing those who were lost, and learn to hold on to the past while not letting ourselves become crippled by it. Easy words to type, certainly, but a lot more difficult in practice, and I don’t know that there’s ever going to be an easy or simple answer for how to move on after the loss of loved ones. And if there is, I’m not sure I even want to know it.

In the wake of the plane crash in November 2011, OSU sought a way to pay respect to the fallen and honor their memories and the memorial you see pictured above is the final result. Construction was finished a few months ago and I have biked past many times while also stopping to look at the pictures and read about each one of the individuals via the epitaphs engraved on each of the markers. It’s a somber scene, but serves as a way for me to think back on these lives while also serving as a reminder to hug my wife and my two kids a little closer each day when I get home from work.

On the morning I took this picture I had just biked past the memorial when I noticed the buildings in front of me, as I faced west, turn a deep orange almost like the Lord pushed the saturation slider all the way to the right. I stopped, turned around, and saw one of the most stunning sunrises I can recall in recent memory which I quickly attempted to capture with my D7100 and 50mm lens. I reversed course and crouched down in the parking lot just to the west of the memorial, moving myself around a bit so as to position the slabs of granite between two trees while also getting a good view of the sky behind them.

If this picture looks photoshopped, I promise you it’s not. Well, not very much anyway. I adjusted the black levels just a bit but otherwise what you see here is pretty much exactly what I got to see on this chilly January morning. The memorial is bathed in a perpetual white thanks to the light fixtures installed around it, which highlights them in stark relief next to the brilliant orange and purple sky.

As I got back on my bike and continued my ride around the stadium I was struck by how quickly the scene changed, and in less than two minutes the sun was over the horizon and the richness of the morning colors had faded away. It was a quick reminder of how fleeting so many things in life are, and also how important it can be to pause for a minute and spend time to appreciate what we have right in front of us before it’s gone.