In my latest effort to push my photography style, I have decided to work on understanding a technique which has alluded my bag of tricks for most of my career – Macro Photography.
DISCLAIMER – For most of my career I have not understood the process of Macro Photography. I understood Close Up Photography and knew there was a difference and knew that I could not achieve that true Macro look. In all honesty though, true Macro was not really needed in my day to day photography at the newspaper. Yes, we had a 100 mm Macro lens, but I did not fully understand how to work with it. I knew I could get closer to my subject than my regular lenses but did not fully utilize it to its full potential. While I have been proficient in utilizing various techniques, I have to admit the realm of Macro photography both boggled my mind while at the same time scared the pants off me.
In my life after the newspaper, I have enjoyed taking close up photos of things I did not always photograph while being a journalist – colourful leaves, super close up flowers, frost and things I generally walked past. I have worked to look at things differently and through that, my eyes have been opened with the world around us.
I am working to still understand this technique but from the experimentation I have done so far, I like it and want to improve and understand the techniques more. Here is an early glimpse into this realm of photography.
Life before Macro
Despite the effort I put into it, I could only get so close. Why? We have to remember that every lens has a minimum focusing distance. Macro lenses allow you to physically get closer to the subject than regular lenses do and without a dedicated Macro lens, I could only get so close. In fact Macro lenses often allow you to have a 1:1 ratio and you are able to have magnification of your subject. This is ultimately how Macro photos look different than close up photos.
Then at Christmas and I got my first set of Macro extension tubes. What these special attachments do is to extend or lengthen the distance of the front element from the sensor. By doing this, it allows you to get closer, actually make that a lot closer, to your subject. It means as well that you can take any lens you might have and make it a Macro lens. And I started playing.
A Whole New World
The first series of images I photographed were some miniature flowers that were the size of baby’s breath. I first took a photo to show how the image would look without the extension tubes.
The flower get lost amidst the other foliage. So I added the tube and was able to place my camera lens right up to the flower, which created a completely different look and allowed me to focus on the miniature flowers instead.
As you can see, my first real attempt was not a complete failure. In fact, for me, this was a major win. Why? Ultimately because I had finally succeeded in being able to capture something minute and make it appear larger than it is.
After a brief step back (more out of lack of time and honestly a bit of lack of motivation), today I pulled out the extension tubes again. This sudden desire to begin experimenting again came after an inspiring night talk this past weekend by one of Canada’s top Macro Photographers put on by the Camera Store. Watching his presentation was truly inspiring and I could not wait to start pushing myself again. What did I learn from him. I learnt a number of things including to always look around us, to take time to think about colour and composition and that Macro Photography needs lots of light.
But what to photograph? I was surprised while driving home to see a bunch of Goat’s Beard weeds were still in seed after the unexpected mass snowfall last week. There it was, my subject was sitting in the mud beside the road home. So I plucked a couple of heads of fluffy weeds (that looked like oversized dandelions and each seed being about the size of a thumb tack at the most) and took them home where I put them against my grey backdrop. I jerry-rigged a light tube with my flash out of a potato chip tube and threw a number of different colour gels on the flash to play with colour as well as some without the gels.
So here is the results of me trying the lighting set up mentioned above, with shots from both my 50mm and 24-105mm lenses with the extension tubes on them.
In the photography classes I teach at Mount Royal University, I advocate to the students to try new things and push the way they see the world around them with photography. These are words I have to practice myself. There is no better way to learn than to push your normal boundaries and try to see things in a different way. For anyone who knows me, you know I do not consider myself an abstract photographer. I like in focus identifiable subjects. And I do not generally gravitate towards abstract imagery, but I find sometimes, pushing those personal boundaries yields surprising results.
One final shot – my attempt at Abstract Photography…
So ultimately what does this all mean? I am going to keep experimenting to see what kind of interesting images I can capture, while trying to see details we do not always notice.
Who knows what kind of evolution might happen when we just decide to try new things?
