Series of Four
This is the eleventh Blog in the “Series of Four” series. Each blog focuses on a different aspect of photography, either technical or creative. To see the full set of “Series of Four” blogs, click here.
Macro photography – Critter Art
Macro photography is the art and science of taking hyper-closeup photographs. I have enjoyed macro photography immensely. It takes you into another world which looks very alien but which is actually around us all the time. A certain amount of specialised equipment is used such as marco lenses, extension tubes etc. but you will be surprised how much you can do with the equipment you have, assuming you are prepared to get up close to whatever spider, fly or other critter you want to capture.
Today I came across two dead ‘daddy-long-leg’ insects on my windowsill (A crane fly in the insect family Tipulidae). I took out my macro lens (see the setup I used at the end of this post) and a couple of hours later here are the results – Critter Art.
Here are the unfortunate insects on the windowsill – there are hundreds of them around at this time of year but I have never looked at them this closely before.
The equipment
The equipment I used was as follows:-
- 2 insects (dead* in this case which make it a lot easier),
- 1 dining room table (with spouse permission)
- Canon 1D MkIII camera
- Canon EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens
- Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX Flash
- DG Extension tubes
- Yongnu MC-36R remote release
- BENBO 1 tripod
- I used the manual settings of 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 100
(* The insects were already dead – promise – but it does tend to make them more cooperative.)
