For those that don’t know, macro photography is photographing things at a very close distance to capture very fine detail and texture. It requires either a macro lense, a macro filter, or a telephoto lens from a further distance. Macro filters are a great way to get started with macro photography, or if you just want to dabble. They attach onto a normal lens by screwing on to the end of the lens. I’ve always been fascinated by macro photography and after getting a set of macro filters for christmas a few years ago I finally got to mess around with it. Before I had only ever attempted macro photography by using my telephoto lens and zooming in as close as I could get, but this could only get so close. These filters allowed me to capture more detail. So far I haven’t done any macro photography for any class projects but on occasion I try to experiment with my macro filters. I typically end up using them for close ups of plants, flowers, and nature in general, and this week I decided to photograph some flowers I got at a Marywood Activities Council event recently.
I wasn’t liking the lighting in my room for subject I was shooting, so I decided to use flash. Finding a balance between a fast enough shutter speed to reduce motion blur for such a close subject, while also needing to let the full exposure of the flash be captured took a few tries, but 1/320 seemed to work best. It allowed for a clear image despite my shaking hands. As far as aperture, f11 got me a good exposure, with ISO 100, and additional light from the flash. Besides capturing that texture and detail that is indicative of macro, I also wanted to focus on composition. Getting interesting angles in camera helped when cropping for the final photo. While I tend to lean towards rule of thirds and leading lines as my main modes of leading a viewer’s eye through my photos, strangely I liked the more centralized compositions of a few of these photos. Color was another focus point for several of the photos, as the flowers made for an interesting color scheme that was eye catching in combination with the texture of the photos.
When editing I mainly focused on increasing the exposure where necessary, and increasing the texture. To achieve this I utilize the sharpness and clarity slides. I don’t typically like using the texture slider as it adds texture where it is otherwise unnecessary as well as unnatural looking. For something like this I want to only bring out the features that are already there, not create a warped perspective of what the subject actually is.
