![]() But getting what you need for a focus-stacked image comes back to preparation and visualization. It allows you, in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, to merge multiple in-focus areas from a series of macro photos together into a single shot. Focus stacking is a process that can be helpful when working with the very shallow depth of field you get in macro photography as well. Your margin for error is higher in macro work, which means your preparation must be greater - previsualization is key. “It takes a lot of time and a lot of careful planning.” “When you’re working with macro photography, you have such a narrow plane of focus that little adjustments will throw the whole thing right off,” Klise says. Working with smaller subjects means your depth of field shrinks, making it very important to go into macro shoots with a plan for what photos you want to get. “Macro photography is dependent on the photographer and what it is that they want to enlarge for people to see,” photographer Stephen Klise says. You’ve got to get in with tweezers and little brushes to try to clean everything off.” And if it’s something fragile, you can’t just get a can of compressed air and blow it. When you’re magnifying as much as you will in macro photography, you may be looking at stray hairs that appear as big as pool noodles. While most lenses shoot at a ratio of 1:2.8 and greater, macro lenses shoot at a 1:1 ratio and can focus only within the macro range of about 12 inches or fewer - essential for the super-sharp focus needed to make the minuscule larger than life.Īs you move closer to any object, the fine details and tiny imperfections that are invisible from a distance become clear. You might be sitting in front of a great macro subject and have no idea.”Īs your eye develops for macro subjects (“You just have to do a lot of macro shooting before you start to get a sense of what’s going to make good subject matter, where the best angle might be,” Long says), you’ll begin to see certain difficulties that arise with this specialized skill.įirst things first, before any macro photography advice will be useful, you’ll need a macro lens. “Because when you’re going into macro distances, things just look completely different than what you see in the real world. “I think the hardest thing about macro photography is actually previsualization - learning to recognize what a good macro subject might be,” says Long. “It’s always the job of the photographer to ensure that they’ve organized the frame and used all of the expressive mechanisms they have - like depth of field, motion stopping power, and the control of light and shadow - so that the viewer immediately knows what the subject of the image is.” “I think the hardest thing about macro photography is actually previsualization - learning to recognize what a good macro subject might be.”īut when you’re having to adjust your perspective so significantly, where you find the right subjects and angles can be a real challenge. “What makes a great macro image is the same thing that makes any great photograph great,” Long explains. The more you delve into this new, mysterious world, the more you’ll know what you want to document. I shot a cornflake at some ridiculous level of magnification, and it looked like either a really gross piece of meat or the surface of Mars.”Īs with all photography, exploration is what fuels your ability to understand what you are looking for in your photos. There are really cool textures - they’ve got hair on them. “Berries are fascinating when you get in really close. “A really great place to start is to work your way through the refrigerator,” Long suggests. In macro photography, the world you know is gone, and a new one emerges. “It’s an alien world when you get into the macro level,” says photographer and teacher Ben Long. But that need is magnified, literally, when you’re changing your perspective to work on the very small level of macro photography - shooting bugs and other small items that live in a world apart from most photos you’ll shoot. ![]() Are you shooting with a prime lens or from a distance with a telescopic lens? Or is this a live event, and do you need to come prepared to use a few lenses? “It’s an alien world when you get into the macro level.”Īsking yourself these questions and thinking through the logistics are skills you want to build as a budding photographer. Who’s your subject, and where are you shooting them? What’s the lighting like, and how might that affect the shot? Are you shooting from above or below? Is the subject on the move, or are you moving as you find the right angle on a stationary landscape? And then you can get into the gear-related questions. ![]() ![]() Photography is always a matter of perspective. ![]()
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