I always looked at everything as a potential subject for my camera and I. With all the wildlife photography I did, and I loved the adventure of it, in the end I am not sure it was my favorite. I cannot imagine how many landscapes I have captured with my cameras. North, south, west and just a few east. I photographed a lot of architecture especially old architecture. Many race cars in action. Horses to some degree. Remember I have an undying love for my equine friends, and owned no small number of them in my life. I have even done some people photography. Including portraits, weddings, models and on.

With everything said, it would be hard for me not to put near the top for my favorite discipline in image making, close-ups. Macros and even micros at times. Especially of each and every part of nature.

The little things count.

There are three distinct ways to create close-up or macro images.

One is to use a macro lens which will focus out far enough to make close, detailed images of any given subject. Often small subjects or very small areas of larger subjects.

Another is place an extension tube on the back of a normal lens. That makes a non macro or close focusing lens effectively a macro lens. Yet one more is to use a telephoto lens, likely 300mm to 600mm, maybe with a magnifier which will make the lens even longer, and shoot a subject that is large, but you will cover only a small section of said subject.

The final method is to make a normal image, and crop it into a close-up form while editing at home.

I have every method you see above, although my prime method was to use either a macro lens, or extension tubes.

Little critters, be they flies, bees, caterpillars, butterflies and on and on, are a prime candidate for the macro/close-up treatment.

Below we have two flies, a caterpillar and a butterfly. Note that with the final image which is the butterfly, I also used electronic flash. Doing that negates a truly natural image, but produces an artistic mood if you will. It also via the extra light, allowed me to stop down the 300mm non macro lens I used, to f9 instead of f2.5, giving more depth of field, or deeper focusing abilities.

Close-up images of larger subjects fit into the overall macro/close-up category too. This Mute swan was actually quite a distance away from me. I used a 5oomm telephoto for a natural crop that needed very little extra curricular activity at home to produce the image I wanted. Also, the pretty light helped.

Ice, is a great subject for close-ups.

The five images you see below, were part of a set of theme photos on ice. They were not all made on the same day, or at the same location or time.

Flowers, especially dewy flowers (my favorites), make for great macros. You can drink in the colors, and feel the dew on these flowers below.

This is a straight up macro with a 90mm Nikon macro lens.

Whenever time and circumstances allow, make your composition count.

This incredibly simple composition of a type of grass, was still composed carefully while I did my best not to knock off that single drop of water on the end of the plant.

Balance, can be important.

Much like the goose I showed earlier in the post, your subject does not have to be close if the frame shows a large area of only the subject. The same holds true with non nature subjects. This race car, in action and at speed, is among the smallest types of cars that grown adults race. They are in fact called by the politically incorrect name, midgets. The point to this image which I made many years ago, was to take future viewers right into the world of someone racing one of these cars.

There is a never ending supply of subjects which can be given some form of macro or close-up treatment.

I will show more over the next post or two.

Ahhhh, here’s to the open minded children.

Have you ever noticed, that while the youthful exuberance of children might make it difficult to communicate with them at times, ultimately when left to their own devices, they obsorb truth and often make the changes neccessary to accomadate that truth, while grownups reject anything that they once thought was not the truth? The grownups believe only what they want to believe.

I often wonder just what the age is where we “grown ups” decide to stop searching for truth in favor of what we want to hear.

May God Bless,
Wayne