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Another summer's end: four years of photography in The Mennonite

posted by Tim Nafziger on 10/02/11 at 11:39 PM

Four years ago I published my first blog of photographs here on The Mennonite's website. It was entitled A celebration of summer's end. Since then I've published 45 photography posts (browse them here). This week I passed 100,000 views on Flickr, the hosting service where my photos are published, and I wanted to thank all of you who have been my audience and encouraged my development as a photographer.

Four years ago I was an enthusiastic amateur. When I put "photographer" on my business card, it was largely an aspiration. But since then I've done one show of my photos, six weddings and a number of freelance gigs for magazines. Thanks to all of you have providing me motivation (and rationale) for investing time and resources in developing my craft by being an audience for my work. In this digital age, my relationship with you as an artist is a good bit more ephemeral than it once was. Nonetheless, dozens of you have come up to me in person and told me that you enjoy my work. It's meant a lot.

Since my first post four years ago was from the Chicago Botanic Garden, I journeyed back there yesterday for another summer's end. As I shot these photos, I thought about how they might compare to the photos I took four years ago


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One constant for me is light and shadow. This Nasturtium is bathed in the evening light that always makes me grab for my camera. Some of you may remember my Light and Shadow post in 2008 that focused on this theme.

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One things that's changed for me is depth of field. I've come to love the narrow band that my 50mm lens focuses on when I open it wide up to f-stop 1.8. In a setting like the botanical gardens, the out-of-focus part of the photo can be at least as beautiful as the subject in focus. Those circles of light you see on the right hand side are called bokeh.

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This is another photograph where depth of field was an important part of my composition. I've learned to love the crisp detail that comes through with my 50mm lens. This stone with a black string wrapped around it is the equivalent of a "stop sign" in zen garden design: asking people not to walk down the path beyond but simply look and absorb the patterns in the sand.

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Sometimes the out of focus objects can evoke paintings, sometimes famous impressionist ones.

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I've come to love the way leaves look just a few centimeters out of the focal range, as in this sky-dazzled shot.

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I've also become more comfortable taking portraits of people, in this case my friend Kara.

But enough words. I'll let the rest of these photos speak for themselves.

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Nafziger_tim_2_thumbnail Tim Nafziger is a activist, writer, organizer and web developer. He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Charletta where he attends Living Water Community Church. He is the administrator for the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and serves as Outreach Coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams. For more about his life, read his first blog post.