
I wanted to participate personally in B&H’s Macro Week content creation, but I’m not an experienced macro photographer, so I borrowed a Nikon AF Micro-NIKKOR 200mm f/4D IF-ED lens from a colleague, bought an Aputure Halo Ring Light and set out to create interesting and unique ultra-close-up images. What I didn’t expect is that macro photography is hard. Perhaps hard is not the right word, but what I found is that you need to approach macro photography with a different attitude, process, and expectations than you would for other types of photography. This may seem like a blanket truth for any type of photography, but macro forced me to adjust my approach, style, even philosophy—but I think, eventually, I found they key: patience.
In a room full of old-school photographers and gearheads, it may not be safe to admit that I am a run-and-gun photographer, but that’s what I am. I started in documentary street photography and photojournalism and appreciate the ability to recognize a moment, a gesture, a composition, and the lighting necessary to make an interesting image quickly. Often however, an important aspect of this type of photography is to know when you missed a shot, either from your own doing or from something out of your control, and when to move on. Again, not my proudest admission, but often I miss a photo because I was not patient enough or I was simply moving too fast. Macro photography cured me of that, at least temporarily, but it took a few failed series to finally find the subject and the approach that made for, what I considered, a successful macro photo.
My first idea was to shoot eyeballs, with tight framing, to try to show variations on a theme and pose the question: what can we tell about a person from just their pupil, iris, and the sclera? I photographed friends and colleagues, adults and children, and even those with impaired vision. It was a good idea, but I did not get the results I was hoping for. For starters, shining an LED ring light into someone’s eye from inches away is not a way to make friends, nor good subjects, and it was hard to maintain focus on eyes attached to heads that kept moving. It was easier and surprisingly interesting to take shots of closed eyes, with lashes that looked as thick as blades of grass. But this failed attempt led me to the idea of photographing people’s lips, and this turned out to have some merit.
My favorite aspect of macro photography is that it forces the viewer to see a subject in a way we really can’t with our eyes alone—to reanalyze what we think we know—and this turned out to be quite true with the lips I photographed. What I discovered is that mouths and teeth are ugly when viewed up close and static. How often do we take a long look at the tiny freckles, blemishes, and hairs around someone’s mouth? I don’t advise it. Some of the most beautiful people I know just don’t seem that pretty when you’re seeing only their stationary mouth from inches away. Another problem with this attempt was trying to lock focus, a major frustration for any macro photographer, with the extreme shallow depth of field created by a telephoto macro lens. Not only was I unable to figure where focus placement would best serve the image, I bounced back and forth between autofocus to compensate for moving mouths and more precise manual focus. Inconsistent lighting was also problematic. Again, a lack of patience and I was done for, but some of the images were cool, in an abstract and squirmy kind of way.
Flowers or insects are often the go-to subjects for macro photographers (and with good reason), but I did not want to go that route because it’s been done to death. I did want to try small objects that would look interesting seen close-up and, fortunately, something fell into my lap, or more accurately, fell out of my pocket. Biking home from work one day, my keys fell from my pocket onto the street and, by the time I realized it and returned for them, they had been run over by numerous cars and trucks. I gathered the various pieces that had been strewn around the avenue and carried them home like I would a dead baby bird or other victim of a violence, out of proportion with the simple miscue that preceded it.
The next day, I had the idea to photograph these fragments of bent metal in the warm afternoon light. In this case, I pulled out my trusty Oben tripod, added a small Luxli LED light adjusted to warm daylight for fill, and proceeded to shoot these severed and scarred bits. Mostly I shot with the self-timer to avoid motion blur and, while the process did offer some insight into our attachment to these anachronistic tools, which seem like a relic of the mechanical age, ultimately, the series held little interest. Perhaps it was the lighting or the fact that the keys did not fill the frame as I had hoped, but I tried a few more items—food, dirty windows, old baseball cards, even broken figurines, but nothing seemed to provide that nice match of form and content that we look for in our creative work.
I chastised myself for being a slapdash photographer, a one-trick pony, and was just about to consider this a failed project, when I went down to our garden to find bean sprouts had just popped up from the soil. Some, like the proverbial David, had lifted and pushed a goliath clump of dirt out of the way as it sprung to life. Boom! I ran back upstairs to get my Nikon D750 DSLR, 200mm lens and tripod. This time, it all came together. I spread the tripod legs wide, got down on my knees in the dirt, and put the camera as close as I could to the ground. It was as if the golden evening sun were custom-ordered, and the subject matter was perfect. I shot slowly and judiciously, manual focus all the way. I adjusted the tripod head, when necessary, to capture a few alternate angles, slightly selected focus onto different parts of the plant and shot 1, 2, 3, and then onto another sprout. It all took about fifteen minutes, but it was done with the patience and, more important, the deliberate and meticulous decisions that are a must for macro photography. I experimented, but not wildly, and it seemed that a whole new world was unfolding for me as I photographed these plants. To me, that was success.
So yes, macro photography can be hard but, if you approach it on its own terms, get the tools you need, and don’t rush things, you will have a wonderful time making beautiful images. If you understand the scale, the myriad options within a minute space, the achievable end-goals, and don’t try to shoot it like other types of photography, macro photography can be as exciting and revelatory as traveling to a mountain vista on the other side of the earth, or chasing down a fleeting news image.
Let us know about your early experiences with macro photography.
3 Comments
When I make macro photos - for fun - it's always as a wintertime or bad-weather activity when I don't want to be out doors.
I hear that...good plan
Não desista de fotografar insetos e flores, pois ainda estamos apenas engatinhando nesse universo infinito. . .