If I would have had to limit my photography to only one genre, it would have been nature, and if I would have had to limit my nature photography to  only one of the primary disciplines of nature photography…..landscape, wildlife and macro, I would have chosen macro. I love both landscape and wildlife photography, but they are of a bigger and more obvious world. Exploring nature’s littlest subjects, is a singular and personal experience. Most of what a true macro nature photographer photographs, is never even noticed by other photographers. It is the act of discovery, made bigger than life, even though the subjects, are among the tiniest. There have been occasions when I have become so lost in that world, that time has stood still for hours. There is something new to experience, each and every time in the field, in fact, on every step you take. If I am anything, I am an explorer, and macro photography validates who I am. The blend of education, natural art, and visual wonder, is a gift to anyone who chooses to look. To anyone who’s willing to “see’.

Macro photography is a blending of the seasons. The story of our earth is right there, in the flowers, grasses, webs, insects and other little critters of spring and summer. Fall brings change. The veins of a fall Maple leaf backlit by the afternoon sun is art reaching out to us in a maze of directions. Winter brings ice, and so many patterns that one small bit of frozen water, becomes a microcosm of the whole universe. Winter becomes life in the abstract when one looks through a macro lens.

Macro photography is physically the most challenging form of nature photography. It’s worth every leg cramp, backache, and stiff neck you will suffer. If you believe that one has to suffer for their art, then maybe the suffering might be physical as well as emotional. Macro photography is not for the lazy.

Practicing one form of photography will always help you with another. Macro photography will make you a better landscape photographer, a better wildlife photographer, and for that matter a better architectural photographer or studio photographer. It will also teach you that there is much more within your reach, than originally meets your eyes. It will teach you to “see”. There is no trait more valuable for a photographer who’s making images, or a person who’s living life, than to see beyond your eyesight.

Below we have four wonderful pictures by four different photographers, and then a few more pictures of my own. Those are humble in comparison to the four they succeed.

Grzegorz Skowronski made this gorgeous image of butterfly and flower.

Martin Heigan is the artist/photographer who created this wonderful look deep inside a flower.

M

Fred Roe takes us into the world of a tiny Jumping Spider. The natural world viewed up close moves us closer to our joys……and our fears.

Pedro Lasta made this amazing picture of a tiny bee hovering as it seeks pollen from this beautiful flower. This image would have been powerful without the bee. It is fascinating with it.

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Thank you and God Bless,                                                                                                                Wayne