Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: bokeh

  • Still Here

    Still Here

    Shallow depth of field photograph of a single tall sprig of grass
    Still Here — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/640

    As I was preparing to onboard a fast 35mm to my lens array there were three primary uses driving my motivation:

    1. Tighter option for landscape shooting situations where the 14mm is too wide
    2. Sufficient prime lens solution to spend an entire day shooting with a single lens—think of it as a walkabout lens for Disney World
    3. Tack sharp rendering even wide open at f/1.4—allowing all sorts of shallow depth of field, selective focus, and bokehlicious opportunities

    Yesterday’s shot above speaks to the latter, and if I get down to it, is the primary reason I long coveted this lens. As much as landscapes are my wheelhouse, this kind of dreamy, shallow depth of field shooting engages me the most. It’s back to the basics photography—walking around, camera in hand, single shot work up close and personal with the subject. Frankly shooting landscapes becomes a bit clinical at times; rote behavior stuck behind a tripod, never worrying about focus—thanks, hyperfocal!—and capturing brackets. But it’s not all a crying shame, being detached a bit from the process allows you to sit back and take in the great sunset you’re there to shoot.

    Bringing it back around there’s just no substitute for pared-down handheld shooting. Walking about Stafford Forge yesterday I met with a surprised greeting the nascent remnants of a seasonal control burn. It must have taken place about 10ish days ago as green grasses were already breaking through, coloring up the landscape. Every year this happens, taking down human height grasses and brushes that will steadily accumulate over the spring, summer, and fall growing seasons. For yesterday it made for a chance meeting with this bit of grass here—anyone able to ID that thing? Like most plant life in the Pinelands heat from forest fire allows protective casings to open and seeds to drop. Think of pine cones. This makes the control burning a necessary and important task for healthy maintenance of a productive pine forest ecosystem.

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  • Spring Too Soon

    Spring Too Soon

    Square format photograph of a freshly bloomed daffodil
    Spring Too Soon — 35mm | f/2 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/5000

    Eager for some more lens time, I photographed this daffodil earlier today. Chilling on the north side of my yard, it’s always my first flower to bloom—a clockwork messenger chiming to the first sounds of spring. A spring it seemed that was on with a vengeance this March. Seeing temperatures readily cracking 60, with several spikes into the 70s and 80s. Record shattering warmth after the back-to-back, bitterly cold backloaded winters of 2014 and 2015 that locked the mid-Atlantic in ice. Finally it seemed this was the year to rocket off into an early, and perhaps even warm spring.

    [Insert cliché record scratch] We toss.

    In spite of our best hopes of a Cinderella springtime, it’s looking more and more likely that the region will face a significant late season storm Sunday into Monday. Just in time for the start of spring. The spring that once held such hope. Instead we may be looking at widespread moderate to significant accumulations across the area. So all those poor cherry blossoms that got dressed up early this year will have their nascent blossoms held in icy cold hands. I guess we hold our collective breath that the moderate temperatures spring back post haste.

    As far as the photo goes, here’s shot number two with 35mm. I’ve been keen to see how the bokeh would show with flora work, and the daffodil’s spring showing made for a timely subject. With plenty of mid-day sun pouring down, I rifled off a few shots from an approximate distance of about 10 inches from the daffodil bloom you see above. Stopped down to f/2 there’s plenty of buttery bokeh smoothing out the shallow depth of field. I love this kind of shooting—thin areas of selective focus that make for a more airy, whimsical feel.

    My brief time with the new lens continues to impress, even if it still feels a bit foreign to me. From today’s quick session the takeaway was all about color. Specifically the color rendering in full, harsh sun. The blues and yellows being particularly vivid standouts.

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  • With Tumbled Locks and Broken Codes

    With Tumbled Locks and Broken Codes

    Photograph of broken seashells on a pier at the Crab Island Fish Factory
    With Tumbled Locks and Broken Codes — 40mm | f/5.6 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/250

    Let’s shimmy back to summertime, shall we? It’s late December here in the mid-Atlantic and we’re staring a week’s worth of temps in the 60s and 70s. Exactly how Bing Crosby drew it up. With this kind of unseasonable warmth funneling through the region it’s hard not to think back to warmer climes. Of course this is a convenient excuse to post a photograph I’ve been sitting on since the 9th of August. Cripes. Not wanting to carry over any lingering photographs into 2016 you’re getting it now.

    Hopping back to August I remember this day well enough. It started out early—pre-dawn in fact—as Ben Wurst and I made way in the infamous “Otter Boat.” Complete with gunnels so low a two inch rogue wave could sink this ship. Sure I’m exaggerating but it’s a pretty small vessel. Perfect for quick hit exploration of our intracoastal salt marsh. Our original intent, other than infringing on my innate desire to sleep forever, was one of sunrise. The plan was to make for a bit of sandbar in the middle of Great Bay. A place only exposed during periods of low tide. While tides were good, the clouds were not. It was such a serene morning it was hard to think of our efforts as a bust in spite of the cloudless sky. Here we were two dudes cruising around a glassy Great Bay in a low rider. Not too shabby.

    Before heading in we made for the great ruin of our area—the Crab Island Fish Factory. For decades this once profitable fish processing plant has remained a derelict. Nevertheless dominating the Great Bay Boulevard skyline (such as it is). It’s dereliction accelerated during the post-Sandy years, but it does have a pretty neat Ebbets Field connection. I’ve wanted to get out there to explore long before my photographer days, but I never had the means. Of course flip-flops aren’t exactly recommended footwear for exploration of an abandoned island. Particularly one covered in poisonous plants and littered in glass, rusted metal, unknown wildlife, and who else knows what. We did not explore far, but I did manage to make this photograph of what must have been thousands of broken seashells strewn about an asphalt pier. Most likely the result of sea birds dropping clamshells to expose their fleshy, protein rich prey.

    I definitely hope to exploit more photo opportunities at the fish factory in the future. For now you can take a pretty sweet arial tour thanks to some drone footage made a few short weeks after our impromptu visit. The title is a lyrical inspired shout-out to Lera Lynn’s most excellent song, “The Only Thing Worth Fighting For.” At the time of this photograph I was knee deep in True Detective season 2, so that’s the connection.

  • Set a Screen

    Macro photograph of a hummingbird mid flight approaching a feeder
    Set a Screen — 100mm | f/3.2 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/320

    Last Saturday, before the Mullica River sunset, and long before the grilling and chilling, there was hummingbird watching going on at the Wurst Family kitchen sink. While Ben and Jen were dutifully putting in work to prepare a tasty summertime dinner, I was derailing any kind of kitchen progress as is my style. I’m good at getting in the way.

    You see right outside their window atop the kitchen sink hangs one of those nectar/sugar water hanging things that the New Gretna hummingbirds oh so love to suckle. This fly thru hanging restaurant was loaded down with about six hummingbirds bebopping in and out of the feeder and my field of view. Enthralled and in the way, I first started getting some footage with my cellphone. That worked well and on Ben’s recommendation I captured a pretty cool slow-motion video. It’s pretty damn impressive what you can capture with a handheld cellphone these days.

    Not content to call it a day with just an iPhone video, I went to the car and retrieved ye olde camera bag. With macro lens fixed I first tried to capture the hummingbirds from the outside. I initially set up shop at the corner of the house a few feet from the kitchen window and the feeder. Unfortunately my presence (stank?) was too much for our little bird friends. They wanted no part of my camera and me. Back to the kitchen! Back to being in the way!

    Once inside I took over the kitchen sink area. Again. Like magic the hummingbirds came back almost immediately. It seems the darkened screen on the window provided an illusion of safety for these birds. Despite being only a foot or two away from me, they had no problem flying in and out of my frame. While shooting through the medium of a window screen is suboptimal from a clarity standpoint, it was my only hope for capturing these elusive birds. Not only was the end result solid, I actually like the effect the screen has on the finished product itself; the subtlety of the screen grid works nicely with the bokeh in the shot.

  • Platformer

    Square format macro photograph of a Black-eyed Susan and a fly
    Platformer — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 200 | EXP 1/500

    It’s funny how the mind recognizes patterns and builds associations. You’ll see, smell, or touch a thing and, boom, the mind’s eye reflexively retrieves a memory. Anytime my macro lens and I get low to go side-on with daisies or coneflowers familiar MIDI sounds of my youth start humming, and my brain renders a primordial 8-bit Mario jumping from mushroom platform to mushroom platform. You know? These guys. So here I am transforming an innocuous Black-eyed Susan chilling in my front yard into the digital joy of my youth; smooth, clean flower petal edges become jagged lines of a pixelated past. Brains, man.

    How about you? Have any examples of when you see (smell or touch) a thing, and your mind works naturally to retrieve another?

  • Your Moment in the Sun

    Low key macro photograph of a fly atop a Black-eyed Susan
    Your Moment in the Sun — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/2500

    Most always when shooting macro I rely on the camera’s autofocus system to home in on a single point of focus of my choosing—within the camera’s autofocus grid selection, that is. But for this shot I switched over to full manual focus. The system was struggling to capture optimal sharpness of the fly—if anyone can identify said fly that would be great!—so I took matters into my own hands. Literally.

    All factors were ideal for the making of this shot. Wind was no issue, keeping the Black-eyed Susan still; there was a happy little fly confident enough to sit motionless for well over a minute; and lastly, a lone sunbeam illuminating what otherwise was a bed of flowers slumbering in the shadows with a welcome dose of drama. Altogether creating one of those moments were all I had to do was steady the hands, take a deep breath, and depress the shutter before the exhale.

  • Live alone in a paradise

    Vertical orientated shallow depth of field purple coneflower macro
    Live alone in a paradise — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/1600

    . . . that makes me think of two.

    Here’s a flower for your Friday. I hope you enjoy it.

    This is one of my purple coneflowers that I have potted (sloppily) in my backyard. With strong light overhead, a little to my back, I fixed bayonets macro lens and popped off a few shutters. It was five minutes of awesomesauce. You should have been there. OK. Maybe not.

    Regardless, and I’ve said it before, purple coneflower are some of the best floral muses out there. A real go-to for this guy.

    Have a great weekend, everyone. Happy shutters.

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  • Touchpoints

    Square format photograph of cross processed purple coneflowers with rich bokeh and shallow depth of field
    Touchpoints — 50mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/8000

    It was just this past Sunday I dropped such deep knowledge on the Twitters. Insert very strong sarcasm. Flippancy aside I really do like the shallow depth of field. Recognizing its existence was for me revelatory. As someone who spent the better part of 30 years willfully ignorant toward anything photographic, seeing exposures for the first time elevated composition to a new plane of understanding in my sometime left dominant brain. More so, it shed light into why, despite being rather skilled with any kind of fine art pencil work, I could never grasp the nuance and subtleties of painting—I’m especially looking at you, oils. I never understood depth of field. I never saw it. It’s as simple as that. I never understood you could just blur out elements, whether in the fore, mid or back grounds, with purpose to better move the eye across your subject and through its story.

    Art, man. It sounds so simple in retrospect. But I really do like the shallow depth of field.

  • You got a Piece of Heart!

    Cross processed macro photograph of bleeding heart flowers
    You got a Piece of Heart! — 100mm | f/2.8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/500

    I’ve been sitting on this photograph for just over two weeks now. It’s been processed up and ready to go and everything, I’ve just been slacking. Anyway, here’s one of my backyard bleeding heart flowers just after it hit full bloom this past May 1st. Later that very day I scored this fine sunset at Stafford Forge; always a bonus when you walk away with two keepers in one day.

    Even before my macro days began—and all the way back to my time as a youngster—I always enjoyed the company of these early season plants. Harbingers of good times, and a fun reminder of my all-time favorite video game franchise. Yes, that’s a hint toward the title I chose.