Such is Life — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/250
Unwelcome cold has crashed the Mid-Atlantic early spring party and brought its unsociable below freezing friends with it. After a well above average March, with temperatures readily exceeding the 70s and 80s, winter has stormed back with a vengeance laying waste to my Jane Magnolia bush. It was only a week ago I wrote about how pumped I was to finally have my Magnolia back in full bloom after years in absentia. But after a week of morning lows in the 20s here we are back in the tundra with dead flowers in its wake. So much for getting my hopes up—thinking I’d make bunch of macro photos of its lovely purple blossoms this year. At this point I am just hoping today’s rain, sleet, and snow is it for winter 2016. Let’s get on to spring. Again.
I’ve been chewing on out of focus photography for a while now—and by a while now I mean well over a year, and by out of focus photography I mean pictures that are deliberately rendered focus out, in absence of sharpness and clarity. Now I am not ready to declare this here photo the start of something new in my developmental photographic arc, but I am ready to state my affection for this kind of shooting. Done well it breaks through much of what we think are required features in a “good” photograph—strong lines, clear forms, and sharpness on our subject. Focus out instead pares down the rules to introduce simplicity, blur, and softness that brings the attention to the simpler beauty of form, contrast, and movement.
Shown here is a Jane Magnolia bud, a mere day or two from opening, presented in its stripped down form. Even in the absence of focus it’s still easy to pick up on everything happening in the photograph. The sun is warmly shining down on a single flower bud that’s part of a larger bush system. Here sharpness, focus, and clarity are not needed to tell that story. Even in its faded state the imagery is clear. This shot struck me immediately upon import into Lightroom. Even in its unaltered straight out of camera state it smacked me right in the face with that oh, I like this one feeling. A feeling that for me doesn’t come around too often.
Speaking of Jane Magnolias and the layered meaning of the titular Missed—this is the first time in about 3 springs my magnolia bush has armed itself with decent buds. I aggressively pruned and moved the bush a few years back and while it has spread its leaves OK in subsequent years, it has nary managed more than a handful of buds. This year it’s back with dozens and dozens of purple flowers ready for the appreciation of my lenses. I’d be surprised it this winds up my only magnolia capture of the year. It has been missed.
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.
Life Hangs On — 100 mm | f/3.5 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/800
I didn’t expect to see this today. Despite progress well into Fall I somehow have a path of thriving daisies in my backyard. I spied them unexpectedly today while making a quick pass through back there—about ten blossoms in all. More surprising was the amount of insect life teeming about the blossoms. Bees, flies, and some kind of beetle/yellow ladybug type thing; there must have been a dozen or so creepy-crawlies getting in a late season feed. Or maybe they’re just in calendar denial like me? I’m still wearing flip-slops after all. We’ve already dipped below freezing a couple times so this patch of my yard is demonstrating some unusual tenacity. Or maybe I’ve just never noticed the late season prowess of daisies and the requisite wildlife they sustain?
Update: Hat tip to Jeff Ruemeli for being googler du jour and identifying this little flying fellow as a hoverfly.
This One’s for the Introverts — 100mm | f/2.8 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/400
Photography as metaphor? Perhaps. Despite taking this photograph two weeks ago to the day, it wasn’t until last night that this image made a connection to my own self, and my own experience of the world. You see last night I finally made it out to one of the weekly free concerts at Harvey Cedars Sunset Park. Sure it was the last concert of the season but better late than never. Conveniently concert time synched up nicely with sunset and conditions looked promising. But it wasn’t until walking through a packed park of maybe a thousand or so peaceful revelers that I noticed my discomfort. Here I was, a fierce introvert loathe for attention walking through crowds brandishing camera and tripod. Even if the eyes drawn upon me were in my own head it was more than enough attention to heighten my heart rate. My brain downshifted into full on Imposter Syndrome, and my insecurities were happy to remind me that I’m somehow not worthy to have a camera in this space. Paralyzed by my environment I made no pictures.
So how does this rambling anecdote into the spotted mind of Greg Molyneux relate to this photograph? Well it’s all about the desire to be left alone, an anonymous face in the crowd. While we see brightly illuminated flower petals filling the focused foreground, it’s what’s behind the petals that hits closest to home; a lone blossom set back, cast out of focus and into the shadows. This is me. This is how I live my life. Content to do my part on the periphery. And just like those bright petals I’m happy and eager to share myself and my photos open and honestly via social media and this website. It’s that I get to do so at arm’s length that most suits my introverted proclivities.
But it wasn’t all bad. Oh no. Once I returned the camera gear to the car and walked back to a jammin’ Sunset Park, I took a seat toward the back of the grass. Relaxing in my beach chair I watched day glow fade to black, all the while being serenaded by Eagles covers. That was a good time.
On an administrative note: this was the 200th photograph I’ve uploaded since launching this website on 18 January 2014. Pretty cool. To all of those who’ve visited—thank you!
While they may not get the same play on social media like my vibrant landscapes are wont to do, a big soft spot in my heart exists solely to express myself through the macro and black and white medium. Five minutes on a psychologist’s couch would most likely reveal this proclivity as a merger between my primary and secondary school days as something of a black and white pencil drawing enthusiast, coupled with my more recent start as a photographer who worked almost exclusively in the macro world for the better part of my first 20,000 photographs. Roots, man. You just can’t shake ’em.
Here I’ve presented a very simple composition of one of my favorite flower subjects: the purple coneflower. Using a near side-on perspective the depth of field is quite thin. leaving only the front section of the blossom in sharp focus. Shallow depth of field brings a welcome sense of whimsy and wonder to the composition, enabling the eye to move, leaving the mind left to fill in the fuzz. By introducing noise into the photograph during post processing I intentionally wanted the resulting graininess to layer an aspect of grit and imperfection to the shot. In some ways a hat-tip to the tendency of grain to show up in old school film photography—not that I’ve ever shot a roll of film in my life. It’s OK, feel free to revoke any photographist street cred I may or may not have established up and until this point.
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 — 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.
Daedalus Bid You Take Heed — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/125
This is abstract. Is this abstract? I think this is abstract. A quick googling of abstract art returns the following—
art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.
Once I decided to roll with low key black and white processing, all my mind could see is an unnamed papier-mâché sun, brooding near unseen amidst the vastness of space. The way the would-be corona is captured frozen in its solar flare tango as countless sun spots blot out the surface. This is no coneflower—this is a sun. Will our telescopes ever fix on such a sight? Of course not. But another photographer’s macro lens just might.
