Last week was Halloween and we had to carve some pumpkins. My daughter loves The Nightmare Before Christmas and she wanted Jack, Sally and Zero carved onto her 3 pumpkins. Jack came out the best probably because he had the least detail and was on the best pumpkin, but he is the pumpkin King so he had to get the best pumpkin. I decided to make him the star of this weeks #50WithA50
Still autumn of course. Most of the leaves are down now but we’ve still got some beautiful colour around the city. Here is a carpet of leafs on the ground for this weeks #50WithA50. I like the shallow depth of field this lens can give in photos like this. It allows me to pick out one leaf from all the others but still maintain the colour of everything around it.
Out taking more photos around the pond. It is beautiful in the mornings when the sun has just risen and the water is mirror smooth. This had to be the subject for week 42 of my #50WithA50. The lens is still alive after the fall a couple of weeks ago. It did fall apart once since but I took the opportunity to clean it inside and remove a broken piece of plastic that I think had gotten into the zoom mechanism and pushed it apart this time. It clicked back together again and once again everything seems to be working. I know I’m probably on borrowed time with it but just 8 more photos to go and then I can retire it to my old camera gear shelf.
More autumnal photos. The light and the colours are amazing this time of year. This photo almost didnt happen. In fact my whole #50WithA50 almost came to a crashing halt when I dropped my camera at our local camera club meeting. Foolish and entirely my own fault. I had my camera on a desk and must have been playing with the strap during presentations without realizing what I was doing. I stood up as one point to point out something in a photo and I sent my camera crashing to the ground. The camera was fine but the 50mm lens popped apart. The entire front element and barrel just popped out. I had seen it happen before so I knew that there was a chance I could put it back together again. With a few minutes of fiddling and a push the lens went back together. Even autofocus works. I got lucky, very lucky. I dont think I could have done that with any other lens but the 50mm 1.8. It is cheap and plastic and far from precision manufacturing but it can take a beating.
Week 40, 10 to go but I think I’m still behind because Google tells me that this is week 42 of the year? Somehow I lost 2 weeks. I am posting a week behind so I should be posting week 41 this week. Good thing I have two photos taken over the last week or so that I want to post and it is my #50WithA50 so I can cheat a little 🙂 The goal is to get out taking photos and I’ve already taken more photos this year than any year since 2011. In fact I’ve taken more photos than 2018 and 2017 combined and I have a shot of it being my most productive year ever. So goal achieved with my #50WithA50.
Back to this photo. I went for a walk in a wooded area and came across a little stream clogged with leaves. The sun was peeking through the branches and in some places when it hit leaves on the ground or in the stream there was a beautiful golden glow.
I went for another walk at lunch and instead of going right as usual I went left. A few meters down the path I heard a crazy chirping noise and realized it was the sound of a pissed off squirrel. Took me a couple of minutes to actually find him as he kept moving but when I eventually did find him he was none too pleased. At one stage he actually started hopping down the tree towards me as I shot up leaning against the tree. I did have an image in my mind of a crazy flying squirrel lunging down at the lens for this weeks #50WithA50 but it didn’t come to pass. Probably for the best really, I was bitten by a squirrel once when I was a kid and while it didn’t hurt I don’t want to be the guy who has been bitten twice by squirrels. That just seems weird.