OK…. I have a confession to make… I bought a macro lens and made my first macro image. Now I’m not sure why I have this mental stigma about macro photographers. I think it’s because I’ve always considered myself a serious landscape photographer and shooting pictures of flowers and butterflies seems like “sissy photography”.
It’s so opposite to landscape work…
- Landscape is all about the location
- Macro is all about the subject
- Landscape is all about foreground interest and leading lines into the picture
- Macro is about putting the subject on a very narrow focal plane
- Landscape is about dramatic low angle light
- Macro is about diffuse even light to pick up detail.
- Landscape often has infinite depth of field.
- Macro often has infinitesimal depth of field.
- Landscape is about exposure bracketing
- Macro is about focus bracketing
I could go on and on, but I think we all get it… This is different. So why am I drawn to macro?
Because I think it will be fun to have total control over your shooting… Kind of like a minature studio where I have full control over composition, lighting… everything. I don’t have to hope for a great sunrise…. I create my own through colour backgrounds.
So here’s my first crack at a macro shot.
I was very happy with the way it came out and it has really energised me to do more quickly. I can’t say the concept was original, I came across some incredible photos from Lord V and Steve Took It on Flickr with lots of links to great tutorials on how they created the refracted images of flowers.
So where to from here…. I want to see if I can bring some drama and landscape principles to the Macro world…. Should be quite challenging when I can’t even get a bloody leaf totally in focus… but we’ll see.
Stay tuned.