A King’s Ransom
Posted November 11th, 2007 in [hide]Bored one cold, dark night in the upper left corner of our map, I found another use for the fire. Today, the sun went down around 4:30 pm, although the Olympic Mountain Range across the water to the west means we loose sight early. It would be an exaggeration to call us the land of the midnight sun, but it certainly feels like eternal night in the winter here.
We respond by staying indoors, drinking lots of coffee, dressing like Eskimos for the occasional sprint from the door to the car. We find “indoor activities.” We feel like miniature Alaskans, bound to The North not just by our coastal mountains, totem poles, and frontier heritage, but also by our brutal climate. It was against this context that photographing two pennies seemed like a reasonable way to pass time:
This actually turned out fairly well. Canon’s 100 mm f/2.8 Macro is highly regarded for its contrast and sharpness, but not so much for its bokeh. Able to throw a background wildly out of focus, those backgrounds don’t usually look very good. The optics that allow for a completely flat field at life size magnification aren’t kind to the out of focus parts of an image.
You can see a bit of ‘chunkiness’ in the bottom left corner of this photo; it’s not bad, but it’s not creamy smooth like the 135 mm f/2.0 L produces. To counter these handicaps, the frame is as simple as can be. Sharp detail in the pennies draws attention toward the glowing reflections. The warm, soft background and fuzzy curved line show light and form, but no features.
Sometimes, when you don’t expect to see the sun until the winter lets up, you have to make one or two of your own.
The 100mm Macro is my default lens.
I rarely do any macro work with it.
Beautiful photograph and nice color.
Thanks!
When I fist started using SLR cameras, I didn’t realize a macro lens could be used for ‘regular’ photography. It’s actually pretty handy to be able to go from 1:1 focus out to infinity without having to unscrew dioptric filters or teleconverters.
Very nice. The light reflection really makes it work.
Actually, I don’t really understand about photography, But your photo taken by macro lens is really good!
Nice blog you have, keep on your good work, I really like the photo you took!
Thx also for comment in my blog
I haven’t thought of money as something beautiful for ages although you can buy lots of nice things with them. Somehow you made them look very… warm in a way.
I love how you’ve played with the focus. Like you said, the background is great apart from that left corner. As usual you have taken an excellent photograph.
I agree with Emil, the picture has a nice warm feel to it. I recently took a macro picture of a coin (UK 50p) and it looked too clinical, I think I might start a fire in the front room so I can get this type of ‘warm’ shot
Lovely shot, the fire really brings out the coppery gold colour
I wish your RSS feed was full content instead of summary so it included your photos, send me an email to notify me if you make the change and I’ll defintely add your RSS feed to my Google reader account
Thanks, everyone! And I agree, money isn’t typically something we should think of as beautiful. Still, with the indoor boredom and a fire already going, the shininess caught my eye, and it actually worked out pretty well.
Neerav - I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that, actually. I’m really not a PHP person, although I’ve figured out how to improve WordPress a bit. I’m ‘breaking’ the posts after at least the first photo shows up - don’t want the front page to go on forever - but the photos just aren’t coming out in the feed. I know I’ll have to play with some of the WP core files, but … I’m a bit nervous to break the entire system.
Sell out! Just kidding, a few pennies is within everyone’s reach. Especially the American ones the way our currency is devalueing, huh?
Forrest,
Great picture. You know, you mentioned the Olympics and the upper-left corner of the map and I’m starting to think we may live just a ferry ride apart. Are you in Seattle?
Sara