Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

Exposure: 0.013 sec (1 / 80)
Aperture: f/2.5
Lens: 50 mm (4x lete)
Exposure: 0.00
ISO: 100

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by Joe

“This is a very atypical shot of me - I usually shoot people. Because of this, there is no trade secret I can share, perhaps the principle of selectivity: my macro shots are mostly mediocre at best and I can not produce consistent output on this field. I have published this only because I felt that the colour balance, the sense of motion and having both the “facial features” of the bug and the wings on the same plane of focus was a sufficiently rich set of features to do so. Apart from selection (out of some other shots without motion), fairly strong cropping the image - some 40% left - was the ony creative tool I used (otherwise: 50mm [100mm ecv. in 35mm fov terms] with extension tube, iso200 1/200s, f3.5 and an Olympus E-3). There is perhaps only one thing this and “real” or “professional” macro photography has in common: patience and luck. This bug was shot in our backyard - Spring turned surprisingly hot suprisingly quickly.”

The perspective of this shot is unique in that you can’t get that close and see an insect that clearly. The depth of field and the colors bring out the subject as well. Zsombor Cseres-Gergely is a photographer from Budapest, Hungary. Make sure to check out his website. He’s a bit modest but this is a lovely photo. Well done!

by Joe

It’s not exactly a rare occurrence for a Lego Stormtrooper to appear in my macro photos, and the fellow in this shot is my go-to guy when I want to try out a new technique. I’m not sure how I came up with the idea of him tending to his Lego flowers, but it fitted with the lighting style I wanted.

The effect I was going for is one I’ve seen used in some of Joe McNally’s photos recently, the faked sunset. It’s a great technique for when the light quality is poor (in this case, the direct sun was way too bright and contrasty). You move into the shade, and make your own sun! The photo is lit with a mixture of ambient daylight and flash. It was a bright enough day that the 1/250th exposure allowed the background to come through, but the key light is an off-camera Nikon SB-800 flash fitted with a 1/2 CTO gel to mimic the colour of the late afternoon sun.

Easy stuff really, the hardest bit was getting the Lego Stormtrooper to stand up in the grass. He ended up impaled on a cocktail stick hammered into the ground.

This is a bit like yesterday’s Danbo characters. I have some Naruto action figures I’m starting to think maybe I’ll take them out for a shoot later tonight. Like I said in yesterday’s post sometimes a photo isn’t just capturing something that is happening but making something happen. On a point and shoot camera you can do this by setting it to macro mode, that is usually represented by a flower icon. Point and shoots take some remarkable close up photos

Mike has an amazing collection of Star Wars photos. I encourage you to check them out.
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by Joe

I primarily focus on food photography and am always looking for props, ingredients and recipes that inspire my shoots. In this case, I found a replica of a French antique egg holder (one that might hold hard boiled eggs and bread in a bar) and some beautiful farmer’s market eggs with different colors and markings. I use natural light, and in this case, used a western-facing window for the shoot. I wanted to highlight the eggs by positioning them in diffused light and also deepen shadows around the eggs to highlight their spherical form. I did this by cutting the light down with shades and scrims and by using black boards on the shadow side to deepen the shadows. I normally use a tripod and shoot on a low ISO, but after working through a number of photos with a lower angle, I experimented with standing on a chair to shoot down on the eggs and found that angle more interesting. I had to bump up the ISO to make sure I wouldn’t have any camera shake. I shot at a very shallow DOF (f 3.5) to highlight the front egg and create some depth in the image, and used my 105mm macro lens which is a favorite of mine for these types of shots.

Sabra is a great photographer and you can see her portfolio and blog.

by Brian

This orchid was shot with my 100mm f/2.8 macro at the Kahala Hotel during our recent stay.

I love the contrast between the yellow and the purple, and the textures. I did some color reduction on this to get a deeper but more subtle shade of purple.

by Joe

This photo caught my eye today. Have you ever looked at someone’s eye before? Maybe your own? I mean really looked at it. The details of the iris (that’s the colored part for us unedgumacated folk). It’s as if a painter dipped his brush into a palette and drew it with his hand. Ok, didn’t mean to get all poetic. Here’s what Tambako had to say -

I don’t think I look beautiful, but my eye color isn’t so standard, even if I saw people with green-gray eyes, they are rather rare around here. So why not show this color to the world? And in addition, I have a nice picture of my eye, it’s better and easier to see it in the mirror (but I’m not narcissistic )

On the technical side, I took the picture myself, with my macro lens and the flash attached to the cable, and tried many many times to frame and focus it right, believe me, it’s not easy! And every time, the flash in the eye, that isn’t something I’d like to do every day. Anyway, I selected this shot as being the best of the lot!