Due to their nature it may not always be easy to notice the little things. Yet especially these days or this past year, it has never been been more obvious how important they are.
But rather than getting philosophical, which is definitely not my strong suit, here and today I am talking about macro photography.
Last week we had our first couple of really nice and warm days here in NJ and it was time to pack the camera gear and head for our local arboretum. Which, by the way, I have not seen in over a year due to the pandemic. It was wonderful to be able to visit again.
And as for 'camera gear' - yeah, not so much. While I do have a big girl camera and a Zeiss macro lens, I once again opted for my trusty iPhone to do the job. Well, I actually upgraded it and bought a macro lens that I was anxious to try out.
Spoiler - just like the big macro lens it isn't all that easy to get a good shot that is crisp and in focus. A tripod is recommended, but - who wants to lug around a tripod for an iPhone? On top of that an iPhone camera lens doesn't have a movable iris, meaning you cannot choose a specific aperture to control the depth of field.
The part of the picture that is in focus really is a bit random as you can see in the photos below, but they all have it somewhere 馃槄. Regardless of that randomness I think for a first try the images came out pretty decent.
The intent in macro photography is to see those tiny details that are all too often hard to see or not visible to the naked eye. To me it is also a means to abstractify a picture.
A subject that gets much love in macro photography is the center of a flower, and for good reason. You will see several takes below, there are many, many more that didn't make the cut. For comparison I also added a couple of non-macro shots of the complete flowers, so you get a better picture - no pun intended.
To me the most abstract photo of the bunch is the one with only the tip of a single petal in focus. That picture is growing on me every time I look at it.
Next up are three photos, which I shot with the iPhone only, no lens attached. One of them I converted to a colorkey image to emphasize the extremely bright red and yellow tree bud.
The second to last photo was again shot with the macro lens and the last photo is a crop of the same photo to show you the texture on those stigmas (?) and the very, very shallow depth of field if you shoot with a macro lens on an iPhone.
I will certainly be doing more experimenting with this and if you stick around you will see the results in future posts.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed these as much as I had fun strolling through the arboretum in search for first signs of life after winter.
@monochromes