Macro musings

I’m running a couple of Macro photography workshops for a local photographic club soon, so what better subject than that for today’s blog post?  At the workshop I will demonstrate how everyday objects are perfect subjects for Macro images.

Here’s an example of such an everyday object.  It’s the hook part of a Velcro strap on a wrist  support I was wearing.  I used a head torch behind the Velcro as my light source and this gave a cool spotlight look to the image.  To my mind there’s a bit of “Blade Runner” grime/abandonment to it.

The direction that the light comes from makes a huge difference to images.  This Garden Spider had set up its web on one of our window frames, so it was an easy matter to shoot it from inside the house.  For the the left-hand image I used an LED torch to illuminate the spider.  You can clearly see the colour pattern on the abdomen, so it’s a perfect shot for identifying the species.  The right-hand image is lit by natural light, most of which is from behind.  This has allowed some lovely translucency, and you can see through the cephalothrorax and the legs.  It’s a much more pleasing image aesthetically.

This last image is more Close-up than Macro, as it’s not life-size or larger on the sensor.  It is above life-size on this website though.  It’s a male Eristalis tenax hoverfly that has just left a Michaelmas daisy flower.  I used Olympus Pro Capture on my shiny new Olympus OM-1.  I’m still getting to grips with the much higher frame rate of Pro Capture* on the OM-1 compared to my E-M5.  It’s a good way to fill up your memory cards!  * Up to 120 frames per second!

If you would like a workshop, Movement or Macro, for your club do email me at info(@)galephotography.co.uk   You need to delete the brackets; it’s a Spam thing.