Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: square format

  • Scent to Delight

    Scent to Delight

    Lilac photo captured with soft focus in afternoon light.
    Scent to Delight — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/2500

    As if summoned by the light of spring and carried upon the wind there came a smell so sweet. A crown of purple sat atop lilac bushes standing straight and proud about the marches of my backyard. A royal guard if there ever was one. Fresh as new life full of possibility and untainted by avarice and poor choice. A smell so sweet garbed in purple so pure on a bud so fleeting. It will only be a few short days that my yard will border in such well dressed, sweet smelling attendants. Oh most welcome of guests, it is my hope you do enjoy your stay.

    But enough with the flowery language let’s get real. To start I am shocked that on this my 351 post to this website this marks the first lilac photograph. The first?! Suffice to say I would have lost this bet. Yet as I pored over empty archives reality set in. Better late than never, I guess. There are reasons. First, this is the best lilac bloom my yard has seen in years. Predating the January 2014 launch of this blog at least. Second, despite being one of my favorite flowers—both in look and smell—I find them a tough study. As a collective the buds grow to large size, while the flowers themselves remain quite small. This dichotomy has left me with many a mediocre photograph.

    Yesterday busted the slump. Decent afternoon light was spilling in from the southwest as the lilacs neared peak bloom. I first made a picture with my iPhone. And how about portrait mode, huh? Silky smooth background fade for the win. Phones today, they make some pretty great photographs, you guys. With the cell shot as inspiration I went inside, strapped the 35mm on the rig, and set aperture wide open for some real deal bokeh action. This brings us here—my first shot of spring 2017. More to come.

    To all my allergy suffers: I apologize on behalf of my friends.

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  • Backyard Bouquet

    Backyard Bouquet

    Square format low key cross processed photograph of a quick fire hydrangea crown.
    Backyard Bouquet — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/3200

    I am suffering from an itchy shutter finger. Photos have been few and far between lately, and once I saw a spot of afternoon light touch upon my backyard quick fire hydrangea I popped on the 35mm and squeezed off a few shots. I set my aperture to a wide open f/1.4 in hopes for soft focus and smooth, buttery bokeh. Going for a dreamy feel to wash over weary eyes I imported exposures into Lightroom where cross processing seemed the obvious choice—I wanted to bring out a red warmth through a diffuse hue. Intentional soft focus at the center fades away to increasing blur as the eye works out toward the edges in all directions. Up is down, left is right; a square format crop further facilitates this spatially agnostic end game.

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  • Pastel Pop

    Pastel Pop

    Macro photo depicting a reticulated pastel sedum bloom
    Pastel Pop — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/400

    In taking a top-down approach we can process the world around us differently. This may be one of the most basic photographs I have posted to this site, and yet I find it endlessly captivating. It has a real watchability if you’ll allow me to use words that read like they don’t belong in a dictionary. Seriously, I fully anticipated the red-dotted line to appear under watchability—I would have lost any and all bets on that being a word. Anyway. I find myself mesmerized as I look down and into this image, losing myself for minutes at a time. Its tight reticulated pattern reminds of an autostereogram—those mind-melding 2-D images that are supposed to reveal a 3-D scene within its otherwise non-specific pattern. These drove me nuts as a kid. I can remember numerous class trips to several museums where we’d inevitably find ourselves in the obligatory gift shop where we’d one-by-one try our hand at discerning the image. My friends would undoubtedly make it work within a few minutes, and there’d I sit, dejected and unable to make out any kind of scene. My brain couldn’t get past the replicant TV snow presented in technicolor splatter. It always bummed me out as I feared my eyes and brain were somehow broken—somehow a failure of intelligent design. While I still can’t find any kind of image waiting to burst forth from this photograph, nor do I think there’s anything specific hiding in there, it sure is fun to look upon. Far less stressful than classmates bleating out, “there’s the horse! Can you see it, Greg? It’s right there!”

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  • Circular Motion

    Circular Motion

    Low key square format black and white photo of a circular form sculpture.
    Circular Motion — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/3200

    Circular motion will be something of a recurring theme as we spiral toward the 2016 Labor Day Weekend along U.S. the eastern seaboard. Recently named Tropical Storm Hermine is spooling up in the Gulf of Mexico as she creeps slowly toward the Florida Panhandle. While it’s hardly locked down there’s growing consensus that after initial landfall the storm will look to spin its way up the east coast, potentially wreaking havoc on weekend plans, fresh hairstyles, and coastal communities up and down the seaboard. Prolonged rain, wind, and tidal surge will open the door to disruptive conditions for the foreseeable future. Such is the way of things, the way of the weather.

    Subject to storm surge and flooding is LBI’s own Long Beach Island Foundation—also known as the place I made this photograph. Scattered about the grounds are a litany of visually appealing and thought provoking sculptures. I was particularly drawn to a vertical array of circular forms orderly arranged on a ladder type apparatus. If my memory serves me the whole piece was in the ballpark of three feet wide and nine feet high. I tucked in close with my 35mm lens set wide open at f/1.4 to create a shallow depth of field image that accentuated the form and contrast of the circular disks. This one is all about form fleshed out through light and shadow play.

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  • In The Abstract

    In The Abstract

    Square format black and white photo of hydrangea leaves in low key abstract noir.
    In The Abstract — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/1600

    Real talk—

    This—black and white photography brought to life in shallow depth of field, presented in a brooding low key light on abstract terms—is my favorite type of photography. Yes, the sweeping landscapes are great, and I am far better technician than I am a creative right-braining on the more artistic side of the room; but there’s just something about the weirdness and soft forms, not to mention my lifelong love of black and white mediums, that draws me to this type of look. Now don’t get me wrong I wish I was better at it, and more purposeful in my execution of photographs like you see above. I have no process, I just wing it. There’s no real plan until I look at the viewfinder and have a very ground floor superficial thought of hey, this looks cool. This photo was no different. I was barreling up my hydrangea plant from ground level with my 35mm lens and simply liked what I saw. A happy accident you might say.

    Admittedly while I like this kind of shot more than my typical landscape I become increasingly insecure about posting shots of its ilk. Not so much here on this website, more so on my Facebook page which frankly reaches more eyes. The People like my landscape work, anything else is more or less a crap shoot that runs the gamut from yawn to completely ignored. The burden of expectations. I get it, of course, this style is far more niche and lacks the widespread appeal of a stunning marsh sunset. As a result I’ve been sitting on this shot for over a month now, but I can wait no more. Be bold. Be removed from the comfort zone. Be. If nothing else it’s good to weigh the merits of popularity versus personal fulfillment. I don’t think it’s a binary choice, instead it’s more about finding the right spot on the great sliding scale of life. (Let’s see how all of this shakes out since I’ll be following this shot with another square format black and white picture. Gasp!)

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  • Daisy Do

    Daisy Do

    Square format photograph of a sunlit daisy blossom backed by smooth bokeh and soft focus.
    Daisy Do — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/6400

    I’ve been having plenty of fun making photographs of my daisies this year. To close out the month of June I put down my macro lens and went with the 35mm aperture set wide open at f/1.4 to keep the depth of field as shallow as possible. By getting my lens as close as possible to the daisy in the foreground—the flower in focus—I was able to facilitate a scene where the area of acceptable focus was roughly one quarter of an inch think. At most. This helps deliver the buttery smooth bokeh that predominates the shot—both the out of focus elements as well as the array of blended circular features milling about the square format exposure.

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  • Petal Your Wares

    Petal Your Wares

    Shallow depth of field photograph of a single purple peony blossom.
    Petal Your Wares — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/100

    If you’ve been following along with my photo blog journey for any length of time you’d probably describe me as a landscape photographer. You wouldn’t be wrong, and frankly it’s how I’d describe myself. But if it wasn’t for flowers I’m not sure this hobby would have ever gotten off the ground. Let’s take the TARDIS we don’t have but sure do want back to the 2012 photo project that kickstarted my photo endeavor; back to the litany of flowering species populating my yard that taught me how to put an actual camera to use. That spring and summer I became an almost exclusive macro photographer, and in doing so I learned through trial and error how aperture affected depth of field while simultaneously engendering a newfound appreciation for the flowers of this world.

    Conveniently enough it was this purple peony you see pictured above that proved to be one of the first hey, this shot is actually kind of OK photographs I ever took. Crucially it instilled just enough confidence to have me thinking maybe I can make something of myself in this space. At a minimum it offered enough visual evidence that I had at least some clue what I was doing. Feedback both positive and tangible are necessary to fuel the motivation to keep going. It makes effort and failure worthwhile, and it can sustain us through inevitable plateaus that are unavoidable in any task, career, activity, sport, you name it. Life is a serious of small victories mixed in with the moments of monotonous struggle.

    For my landscape fans: please bear with me through the flower posts, and don’t worry there will be plenty of wide angle shots worked in over the coming months.

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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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  • On Second Thought

    Square format landscape photograph of phragmites and Barnegat Bay at blue hour
    On Second Thought — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 0.6 sec

    Sometimes your shoot won’t go exactly as planned. This is OK. This afternoon my buddy Jon and I were hoping for some sunset drama. As it does the big time boom or bust sunsets ride a razor’s edge of yay or nay. Today it missed. It happens.

    Walking back to the car and at peace with said miss, my eyes quickly looked north to find sweeping blue clouds. Then downward to the illuminated houses out on the horizon; finally setting on the phragmites up in the foreground. The blue hour tones were soothing and the contour line of the jetty rock perfectly aligned with the left to right swoop up in the clouds. With a few clicks of the tripod this entire process was over and done with within a span of 20 seconds. Sometimes shots happen fast. At home in post processing I opted on the square format display ratio, deciding it tightened the overall composition.

    In their own way I hold a fondness for shoots like tonight. It’s a good test for the eye to come up with something else when your plan falls through. It’s a useful exercise in staying open to new possibilities, and as an added benefit the time crunch of fading light gets you to work fast relying on instinct.