Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: bokeh

Born of the Purple
Born of the Purple — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/13
Last night’s sunset was a certified banger. A powered up sky show raining down pastel hues upon the green land in every direction. The pinks and purples filtering down from the 360 degree sky dome looked the work of angels. A moment in time to take your breath away and leaves your heart to skip a beat. Without question one of the best sunsets of 2020. A stunner, full stop.
Of course I was home cooking. Instead of getting bent and pouty, the sky faeries shared with me a boon. My front yard purple coneflowers were straight glamor posing in heaven’s pastel glow. The ethereal infusion amplifying the already magnificent colors of these flowering beauties. Excited and inspired, I dashed inside, opened my camera bag, and swapped my 14mm lens for my 35mm. With aperture set wide open at f/1.4, I squatted close to my subject and went to town making frames of my echinacea friends.
This had me amped. Ignoring the missed landscape potential, I popped off shots left and right. My muse looked a wonder under this light and she knew it. So I set about making frames with the intense glow of sunset backlighting the whole scene. It was sublime. One of those flow moments where time sits still—fostering maximum internal focus and presence.
A brief word on the not so intentional making of this photograph. There is another happy accident worth mentioning here: It does not take a keen observer to note this picture is out of focus. Low on light I had a sluggish shutter speed set at 1/13 of a second. As a general rule it’s a safe bet to keep your shutter speed denominator north of your focal length. In this case, sitting over 1/35 or so would be the play. That said, I am of a mind the lack of focus plays right into the strength of the scene. With light cast from a usually unseen parallel universe bleeding into our world if only for a moment. It adds something of a fishbowl effect and it is the perfect accoutrement to the tableau. It conveys the mood in a far truer way than I could have intentioned. Too often we do not see the world as it is. Sometimes sharp focus leaves us blind.
The lesson—missing out on a thing does not mean we lose a thing. Instead it gifts opportunity to see a thing in a different, more diffuse and loving light. We work with what we’ve got, and that is where we create the real magic to capture our forever.
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July 27, 2020
Working Class Hero
Working Class Hero — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/1250
Dutiful honey bee plying her trade. Drinking her nectar and loading her pollen basket, she works with intent. With energy and purpose she minds her craft. Even alone the hive is on the mind. Her community needs her; needs her singular focus to feed and to provide. To sustain the group. Bounding atop pistils by day, she works the land spending hours at the harvest. Undaunted she holds fast to her task. Mindfulness dams distraction. Even the focused lens of the observer matter little to our indefatigable worker bee. She need not pay us any mind—she strives for the hive.
As ever, thank you, John Lennon, for enriching our lives with joy. Thanks for your classic song connecting to this lyrically inspired photo. A working class hero is something to be(e).
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July 12, 2020
The Technician
The Technician — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/160
Photo making is a task I invest significant time. 2020 marks year nine in my photography journey, and what an unexpected trip it has been. Beginning as a desperate distraction from depression, it has morphed into a real passion spanning the better part of a decade. I look back and ask myself what has changed since such a somber beginning? How has my perception shifted since my early days as a lost soon-to-be 30 year old with little clue how to use a camera?
For years I thought of myself as a technician. An individual proficient in making appealing photographs. Something of a process driven camera operator churning out landscape and nature photos per the rules. Viewing myself as a proper photographer, let alone creator, took many years of inner wrangling. I was a guy who followed procedure and protocols to produce a good clean image. There was nothing more to it. Follow steps one, two, and three, and a good photo you will be. As ever labels and semantics tripped me up, and I refused to think of myself as something more than a well trained individual who executes a task list. Anyone can do this, and creativity is no factor.
This view, pedantic and self-limiting, was a silly exercise. Over time I eased up on these pointless restrictions. Why put myself in a box? Or the better question, why exclude myself from other boxes? It’s foolish. After several years I grew inured to the photographer label. Being called a photographer didn’t leave me vexed and uncomfortable, with a furrowed brow looking over my shoulder for someone else with a camera . We must accept what is.
Fast forward to the past few years, and I finding growing comfort traipsing into creator territory. Might I be creative? That’s all cool and artsy sounding, so can it be true of a self-professed technician? Here I submit my writing as evidence. Even though my clear renown, such as it is, is as a photographer, it is my writing that brings the most intrinsic joy. This creative act is far less natural to me than making photographs. There is no technical process for me to follow. No clear roadmap for success. This is a wholly feel-based enterprise, and I am certain that leaves learned readers with a proper taste for grammar cringing.
English class was not my thing as a youngster, and this remained the case throughout high school and college. I showed neither promise nor interest in writing. And yet, for the past few years, it is far and away my favorite form of personal creative expression. The words I write to accompany each photograph I share means more to me than any photo I make. Do not get me wrong, it feels great to have a photo meet with broad community appeal. Those likes, shares, and thumbs up feel good! But nothing pleases me more than a person talking about what I wrote. This praise removed the technician from the uncomfortable box he placed himself in. So allow me a giant thank you to every one of you who takes time to read and resonate with my words. Your time and attention is a gift amidst this tripped up world, and I thank you all.
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July 11, 2020
Courage to Grow
Courage to Grow — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/250
Challenges move as a summer wind. Storm clouds smoke to the horizon. Roiling cloud tops bubble and push to the sky, a fierce beacon girded in unyielding white. It makes a stark contrast to the gray underbelly paved in turmoil beneath. An archetype of the inevitable, the storm will rise. The gust front heralds its great coming. A flush of wind and the onslaught gale meets to the crack of thunder, our souls left scoured in the windswept rain. Life and land buckles, the seas pick up, and our world holds fast.
And then, as if in an instant, the power yields. The wind sits, the clouds break, and the late day sun works through, driving a shaft of light to chase off the din. Passed is the storm; subdued fear left in its wake. The world wakes up—resilient and renewed. Bathed in rich light all is brighter, thoughts are clearer with purpose resolving in sharp contrast. Our spirit tempered and charged. Battered by the storm and buttressed by a resolve before unknown, left purified in the waters of renewal we find the courage to grow.
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July 10, 2020
Upright
Upright — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 800 | EXP 1/125
To remain upright in the best of times is not easy. To remain upright in the face of turbulent times is an imposing challenge. Besieged and bombarded our roots tremble as we hazard to withstand an unrelenting barrage. When little is easy stress takes hold in response to trauma and toxic stressors undermine our stability. Yet we must stand. We must challenge ourselves to dig in, to strive and overcome. To reject the convenient inclination to devolve to our base selves and turn on each other. In so doing turning on our better selves. Ask yourself, am I taking care to take care? What do I need to remain upright amidst 2020’s withering fire of such unrelenting fury—both natural born and self-inflicted? Let us stand together in mutual promise to fortify and support our better selves, and keep seated the scourge who lies beneath. In this way we stay upright together, leaning and holding our brighter selves as one. And if you don’t want to hear it from, well, listen to Bill and Ted.
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July 1, 2020
Green Sight
Green Sight — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/6400
Were I to see into the future would I make this photograph?
Would we do anything were we to see it beforehand? More so, would we have in our possession the power to stop ourselves? When and where would we even want to?
Does our seeing a thing stop us from tracking it? Does our knowing a thing irrevocably change its course? Does its future sprout a new one?
How can we know when our future is here? When the heart lifts and the gifts are easy, and you well know a place you’d swear you knew before.
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May 17, 2020
Love and Lilacs
Love and Lilacs — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/5000
Today marks 43 days at home. Am I hanging in there? Yes. Am I a people starved, in need of hugging and loving, and belly laughs with friends? Also yes. I wrote yesterday how all this time home has reconnected me to my macro flower photography roots. A blessing in all the isolated madness. Well this weekend my lilacs took their first step out onto the springtime stage. They are prepping for their proper debut this week. Before I trim them up to bring their unmistakable scent inside I will get my photo fill.
Instead of the 100mm macro lens I went with my beloved 35mm. It’s a versatile lens, one that affords landscapes, portraits, and even a floral still life. It’s the lens you take along if you can only have one. She’s a show off, too; striking sharpness wide open. Allowing the photographer to execute dramatic bokeh balanced against areas of sharp focus. It’s a dream to shoot and super fast. All I had to do was frame up a pleasing composition in decent sunlight and let the glass do the rest.
Love and lilacs. Lilacs and love. Pink and purple pastel beauties surpassed in sweetness only by their unmistakable perfume. Dating back to the ancient world purple marked out royalty. It wasn’t long before they cornered the market in total. In many cases outlawing its wearing to non-royals. And the Byzantine’s, well they were flat out obsessed with the color. To the block quote:
The reason for purple’s regal reputation comes down to a simple case of supply and demand. For centuries, the purple dye trade was centered in the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre in modern day Lebanon. The Phoenicians’ “Tyrian purple” came from a species of sea snail now known as Bolinus brandaris, and it was so exceedingly rare that it became worth its weight in gold. To harvest it, dye-makers had to crack open the snail’s shell, extract a purple-producing mucus and expose it to sunlight for a precise amount of time. It took as many as 250,000 mollusks to yield just one ounce of usable dye, but the result was a vibrant and long-lasting shade of purple.” — History.com
Thanks to nature purple is for the people; no reserved for the privileged few who managed the singular feat of being born of a certain line. Mother Nature loves all, blind to class and caste, and bestows her regal colors across the lands of even her most humble denizens. Love and lilacs always win and her purple is ours to behold.
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April 27, 2020
Home Again
Home Again — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/100
No one needs me to explain how COVID-19 has left us homebound and siloed throughout much of 2020. Whether in isolation like me or hunkered down others, we’re riding things out void of the communal comings and goings we took for granted. Who would have thought sitting in cafe sipping on a fresh cuppa would no longer be a thing? Yet here we are. Chastened and changed, and I sincerely hope for the better.
All this time home has brought with it both new and familiar things. Each appreciated in their own special way. The principle return to past glory is coming in the form of macro photography. I’ve discussed here before how formative macro photography was to learning The Way of the Camera back in 2012. I unloaded thousands—tens of thousands of exposures on the plants and flowers hanging about my yard. Sure hope they signed those consent forms. Anyway…
All this time at the 2020 homestead is reconnecting me to my roots and my local plot of earth. I’ve lived in this home since July 1993 (bought it off my parents in 2009), and I am back exploring every inch of the property. If for no other reason than my own sanity. I use the term property loosely as it’s not a big yard by any stretch. Yet my parents being the hobbyist green thumb enthusiasts they are had this place teeming with extensive flora exquisitely maintained. I let it go over the years (understatement), but this year, banked by Covid time, I’ve been putting in work about the place. Setting to rights a decade of neglect. It’s still unworthy of its prime, but it’s no longer an unmitigated disaster and that is something!
With the cleanup has come better conditions for flower and plant life to thrive. Giving me ample opportunity to make beautiful photos without having to break any kind of social distance mores. Insert win-win corporate jargon complete with stilted laughter here. It’s been years since I have spent this kind of time with my trusted macro lens. The 100 millimeters that have been there with me since the beginning. This old friend helped see me out of a heinous depression, and I will never forget how she’s here for me once again in my time of isolation. Thanks so much for teaching me patience, peace of mind, and self-reliance. And of course the ultimate thanks for gifting me a passion that keeps on exploring.
Yet I cannot wait for my first real chase of a smoldering sunset out on the marsh. In its own way that, too, will be a trip home again.
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April 26, 2020
On Dark Matters of Contrast
On Dark Matters of Contrast — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/50
Black, white, and all the shades of gray coloring the in between. Mix in a dash of soft focus and toss with a hit of certainty in a cauldron of abstraction and you have yourself a recipe for creation. While it may not jive with many folks, I love this kind of photograph; varied shades of grayscale values distilled down to abstract forms painting with light and movement.
In this photograph I am making creative use of daffodil stems. Photographed at close range, a distance of about 15 inches, with a 100mm macro lens with an f/3.5 aperture. This arrangement allowed me to execute a shallow depth of field, juxtaposing the foreground of focused daffodil stems flowing free while rendering plenty of bokeh across the photo’s blurred background.
When I look upon this photo my mind sees the flowing movement of long grasses underwater. Submerged and swaying with the rush of the tide. It’s a balanced fluid motion, a soft rocking back and forth carrying us away to far off places. Relaxing spaces full of soft beds, kind hearts, and unbridled hope. Just because a thing is void of color does not mean it is void of life, energy, complexity, and passion. Let this be a lesson in all things.
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April 24, 2020