Shot with iPhone 8 Plus in my backyard.
Tag Archives: macro
Thirsty (in Macro)
This evening I was playing around with my macro filters, trying to get some decent shots to submit to the photography group that I just joined (more about that in a moment). I set up my lightbox with my poor excuse for lighting and props, mounted the camera on the tripod and spent about an hour getting totally frustrated. Macro photography is totally different from what I normally shoot. Trying to manage the depth of field, adjusting the aperture and trying to balance DOF to shutter speed, was driving me nuts. The plane of focus was so small! Finally I just grabbed the camera and started wandering around the house looking for things to shoot hand-held. I even resorted to using the pop-up flash.
The cat wound up in my path while he was trying to get a drink of water from the bathroom sink (his favorite place to drink). I got right in his face with the camera and the flash, and wound up with this shot:
Photo taken with a Nikon D700, 50mm lens with 10X macro filter, processed in Paintshop Photo Pro X3.
Yeah, I know it’s a little (ok, a lot) blown out on the bottom right, but I still like the way the flash stopped the water droplets right on the tip of Macho’s tongue. It made me laugh, and sometimes that’s a good thing!
Now, back to the photography group. I attended my first meetup last night of the AZPhotographersGroup. The meeting was an open forum where you could ask any question you wanted about photography. I learned so much just from the discussions around each of the questions. Then Nick, the organizer of the group, presented some tips on how to photograph people, which is what I’m starting to concentrate on now, and once again I picked up some great information. The people were all friendly and willing to share information with newbies such as myself.
The group is very active, with several organized events and photowalks each month. They also do monthly photo challenges where they present a theme and members submit photos relative to that theme. This month, it’s macro photography…which explains why I was playing with the 10x filter this evening. If you’re in the Phoenix/Tempe area, I recommend that you check them out. I’ve already signed up for a workshop next month on how to use an off-camera flash. Now all I have to do is get my hands on a flash unit before then!
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Wildflowers, Hiking and a Macro Filter on Good Friday
We’ve had a short reprieve from the imminent arrival of high 80’s and low 90’s–today’s high was in the mid-70’s, so it was a perfect day for an urban desert hike, especially since I had the day off. I elected to hike a route that I knew would have some traffic, because I was hiking alone and didn’t want to be out in the boonies by myself in case I had an emergency. Never know when you’re going to twist an ankle or a knee.
I went to Thunderbird Conservation Area in north Glendale (59th Avenue, north of Deer Valley Road). My first stop was in a little parking area on the east side of 59th where they have built some wildlife viewing blinds that look out over a small lake–however, there wasn’t any wildlife stirring out there this morning, so I got back in my car and drove to the main trailhead parking lot. My intention was to hike back to the east and approach the lake from the north where there are three other viewing blinds, and hopefully get some good shots of birds and wildflowers along the way.
I started hiking up the H1 trail, headed toward the pedestrian overpass, but came across some wildflowers pretty quickly and I stopped to get some closeups with the macro filter. While I as in the process of shooting, a woman approached me to see what I was shooting, and then she changed my plans. She told me that if I took the H3 trail to the west that there was a “huge” saguaro next to the trail where a nesting owl could be seen. Well, that sounded pretty good to me, so I headed west on the H3 trail. I’ve hiked this trail before and knew that it got pretty steep in places, but I knew I was physically capable of hiking the entire thing if I decided to.
I found the saguaro, but saw no sign of the owl. Just my luck. However, I did get a lot of shots of the wildflowers that are growing in the park. I used my 18-55 lens, and attached/removed my 4X macro filter as needed. Here are a few of the macro shots that I captured:
The shot above was from a little patch of flowers on the side of the trail. No, I don’t know what any of these plants are, but feel free to leave that information in the comments if you know. I just liked the way these little flowers had bits of yellow and red accenting the light purple.
The shot below show what happens when the beetles get hungry!
There were tons of these little orange flowers growing along the trailside. It was a little tough to focus on them with the macro because there was breeze that kept them moving, but I tried to use a fairly fast shutter speed to keep them as sharp as possible (although the narrow depth of field was an additional challenge).
And finally, the cactus are just starting to bloom. I found a couple of specimens that had these beautiful blooms on them. The barrel cactus are also just starting to bloom, but I didn’t find any flowers that were fully open.
All of these were shot as high-resolution JPG files. I’m trying to work on the “Zen of letting go” when it comes to my photo files. I got into the (bad) habit of shooting everything in both RAW (NEF) and high-resolution JPG because I was learning to do HDR’s. However, I tend to take a lot of shots, and so my hard-drive space is rapidly being devoured by all these files. I have a hard time deleting any of them–what if I might need them in the future and they’re not there?? Oh, the horror!!
Anyway, today I started my workflow by deleting all the NEF raw files, and only saved the JPG files. Then, when I processed the JPG’s in Paintshop Pro, I didn’t save the original copy. I just saved the processed version. And you know what? It really didn’t hurt that bad to let all those files go. Now I just have to make time to go back to my previous folders and clean them out as well.
I wound up with 26 macro images that I posted to Flickr. They are available in the set titled “Thunderbird Conservation Park in Spring“. I hope you’ll stop by and check them out, the colors are beautiful.
I also have quite a few photos that I took without the macro filter, and I’ll be going through them later and possibly posting some. Hope you all have a blessed weekend–get out there and enjoy life!!
Wildflower Riot and a Macro Filter
Yes, I am fully aware that “real” photographers turn up their noses at taking pictures of flowers. I don’t care. When I see a profusion of color that occurs for only a short time each year, I’m bound and determined to capture it. And this year, I’m determined to capture it up close.
After yesterday’s hike at Cave Creek, I was a little disappointed in the way most of my close-ups turned out, using the programmed setting on the camera. It just happened that when I checked yesterday’s mail (this morning), the latest issue of “Popular Photography” had arrived, and there’s an article specifically written about shooting wildflowers. Serendipity?? I think so!!
The article recommended getting up close and shooting in macro (either with a macro lens, and extender tube, or a filter). It just happened that I had a set of macro filters left over from my old Nikon 6006 film camera days, so I was good to go. And I knew just the location where I wanted to shoot. There’s a vacant lot at the corner of 39th and Dunlap Avenues in Phoenix where the wildflowers are in full bloom right now. I waited until about 4:30 this afternoon so the light would be a little softer, and then I dragged Andy off with me to shoot some flowers.
Vacant lot at 39th and Dunlap Avenues, Phoenix
The photo above was taken just to show part of the lot where I did my shooting for today. The real fun was getting down on my hands and knees with my butt in the air, taking photos up close and personal with these little yellow and orange beauties.
I started off with just the normal lens (18-55mm), taking care to make sure that my shadow didn’t hit the flowers I was shooting. There was a pretty good breeze blowing, and it made it a little difficult to focus at times, but I used a fairly high shutter speed to try and freeze the motion of the bloom. I tried to keep the depth of field open enough to include as much of the bloom as possible, and still have some blurriness in the background.
I then moved on to some shots using the +2 and +4 macro filters, and was pleasantly surprised at how they came out. Here are some of my favorites:
I uploaded my favorite dozen to my Flickr page in the set “Wildflower Riot“–original title, huh? Please take a look and let me know which ones you like best! I haven’t done any post-processing on any of them, but I may play around with some of them this week–however, I’m very pleased with them just the way they are!
Only downside to today was that I was wearing my Cardinals long-sleeved t-shirt with the white sleeves. I came away with purple and green stains on my elbows after getting some of these shots, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. (Spray-n-Wash, don’t fail me now!)
On the Lookout for Wildflowers in Cave Creek
With all the rain that we’ve had here in Central Arizona this winter, we’re all expecting a fantastic spring wildflower season. The desert is covered with a beautiful green blanket right now, and the buds on the trees are a reminder that spring is just around the corner.
I was surfing the Internet this morning to see if there were any interesting outdoor activities going on in the Valley that would make a suitable subject for today’s photo shoot, when I came across something that sounded perfect. I found that one of our county parks, Cave Creek Recreation Area, was going to be hosting a two-hour workshop titled “Nature and Wildflower Photography 101”. There was no charge for the workshop (except for the $6 entry fee to the park), so I decided to check it out.
The workshop started at 10:00AM, and I got there about 45 minutes early, so I spent some time wandering around the Nature Center before the program started. They have seeded the area around the Nature Center for wildflowers, so there was a nice profusion of poppies, lupine, desert sunflower and brittlebrush, etc. I decided to use the macro setting on my D5000 because I wanted to get some good close-ups. As I found out later, this wasn’t the best idea.
While I was able to get a good close-up of the flower, the depth of field was much too narrow for what I was trying to capture. It was hard to tell just by looking at the results on the camera’s LCD screen in the bright sunlight, so I didn’t know just how unsatisfactory it was until I got home and looked at the images on the computer screen. Still, some of them made rather interesting shots, and I think that with some creative cropping they may be salvageable.
The program itself was very “101”…the guy did a nice job of talking about the importance of making sure that your light source is low in the sky and behind you to get the best lighting on the subject (generally true), and he also talked about some of the best places to find wildflowers in our area. He showed a lot of the photos that he’s taken in the area and used them to demonstrate the use of depth of field, composition, and contrast. And he said “do not use the macro setting on the camera for taking photos of flowers”. Now he tells me. He was a very “old school” kind of photographer who shoots in JPG and does not use photo-editing software…what you see is what you get.
After the session was over, I decided to hike down the Overton trail a little bit to see what might be growing along the trailside. The wildflowers are just now starting to appear on the trails so there weren’t any big patches with lots of color. But I did find plenty of opportunities to try taking shots with the lens zoomed in, using aperture priority mode, instead of using the programmed macro mode.
I didn’t intend to walk very far, but it seemed that every time I walked around a curve in the trail, I found something else that I wanted to see. The trail started to climb, and before I knew it I was too far to turn back, and I was on the backside of the mountain where I had started out. Fortunately I had taken a bottle of water with me since the temps were getting up into the low 70’s, and we all know that it’s a dry heat out here. So I decided to complete the loop trail, a distance of almost 3 miles. By the time I reached the 2.5 mile marker, my feet were killing me even though I was wearing hiking boots. Gotta get some gel insoles! I will have to say that the trails in this park are very well maintained. They are multi-use, meaning that they are shared by hikers, mountain bikers, and horses. All I can say is that there is a reason that the plants there are so healthy, judging by the amount of horse manure on the trail.
According to the workshop instructor, the wildflowers are just now starting to bloom, and will last until about the end of April, about the time that the cactus start to bloom. So I still have time to get some of those shots that I messed up by using my macro setting. I even purchased a season pass to the Maricopa Parks system since I’m really enjoying visiting the different parks in the area with my Nikon.
When I got home and started processing the photos, I got a little frustrated trying to work with the raw NEF files. It seemed that anything I did to them only made them look over-processed, especially on the wide shots of the desert landscape. For those images, I had better luck with the JPG files. I’ve posted several of these to my Flickr photostream in the set titled “Cave Creek Recreation Area“.
Not sure how much time I’ll have to shoot tomorrow. We’re going to Arcosanti next weekend, so I have some chores and errands that I need to take care of tomorrow in preparation for a busy workweek. But it was great to get outside in the fresh air today and enjoy the beauty of springtime in the Arizona desert–although my muscles will probably be screaming at me in protest in about 24 hours!
the Zen of Zann 