A Scenic World

Disclaimer: Everything you find below is my take on the subject of shooting macros. I have a different style than others, and I don’t mean to profess that “my way” is the right way or the only way – this is more just the thinking behind my way. I’m going to try to approach this from a variety of fronts: from focusing on the subject to focusing on the background and the technical aspects of shooting macro. I’m going to limit the subject to floral and leaf photography for the purposes of keeping it simple (bugs and animals are another story altogether). Questions and comments are always welcome.

What Makes a Good Subject?
I think that one of the most difficult aspects of shooting macro is find a good subject for a good photograph. Good subjects themselves abound – the problem is incorporating them into a good photo. A breathtaking macro is rarely just a photo of a perfect flower. Macro shooters shouldn’t forget the adage that a photo should tell a story – even if it’s the story of a flower. The photo, at its core, has to be interesting. Yes, this can come from an unexpected pop of color or perfect curves of a leaf, but there should be something new and exciting for the photo to rise above the level of documentation into art. Photos of flowers can make people feel emotions just as strongly as other types of photography; the key is to tap into those.

“Lean on Me”

This approach doesn’t always have to be literal. For instance, in the following shot, the curvature of the leaves and the way they interact tell a much more subtle story. What I wanted to capture was the frivolity inherent in this interaction – it looks almost as if the leaves are enjoying their act of growing and twisting and playing. If the photo above is analogous to a couple sitting on a bench with one leaning against the other, then the one below is more like two little kids dancing for the sheer fun of dancing:

“Joie de Vivre”

So we have our objective – now we have to find the subject. A lot of people seem to think that perfect flowers with no tears or specks or missing petals are the only ones that deserve attention from a camera. I wholeheartedly disagree. Just as the wrinkles on a face can add depth and texture to a portrait, the imperfect bits of a flower can give character and meaning to a photo that you’d otherwise never stop to look at. In fact, those imperfections can BE the subject of the photo. For instance, I think that’s it’s the missing bit of this leaf that really makes this photo for me (and makes it much easier to title):

“Torn”

Of course, perfect flowers and perfect leaves can make fine subjects as well, provided that they have a key element for ALL good photos: great lighting. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a fantastic potential subject, walked around it a few times, and realized that the lighting was so bland or dark or non-dynamic that it wasn’t worth shooting. Sometimes I try anyway; most times I fail. Just like a person standing angled toward a large window with wondrous sunlight flooding in makes for a better photo than a head-on portrait taken with the on-board flash, the way the flower is lit is often the single most important component of the photo.

There are a number of ways that you can control this yourself with external flashes, brackets, and bounce cards, and I’ve tried a few of those myself, but I realized early on that the way a subject is naturally lit will affect my approach, so I now use only natural lighting. The problem for me is that I don’t “see” a potential shot unless it’s already lit. In a way, I see the shot by seeing the light. There’s a paradox here, though: the sun is almost as much an enemy to your shot as the wind is. What I mean is that direct sun causes weird shadows and harsh conditions and rarely brings out the subtleties and shades that make for a multi-dimensional shot. Just like with a good portrait, diffused directional light is your friend. That’s why cloudy days are perfect days for shooting. There is one big exception to this, though: backlighting.

I have to admit a weakness for the backlit shot here; it’s my crutch,  but it makes everything else involved – framing, exposing, controlling the background, etc – so much easier for me. For instance, this little bud was glowing as I walked down a path, and to me that’s a signal of “Take my picture please!”

“Just a Little Bit More”

So many of my shots fall into the backlit category that it’s almost embarrassing. But I do have some shots that represent other kinds of lighting. For instance, in the following shot, the tulip was to one side in a garden. Cloudy light lit up one side, but the rest fell back into the shadows.

“Tulip in Autumn Colors”

And then sometimes you see a flower that almost seems to glow from within because the way the light is hitting it. This is usually the case for light coming directly from overhead, but occasionally you’ll find it in other pockets of light, usually if there’s lots of random shadows (like a flower growing in the shadows of a large tree). The shot below was taken at 5:52 am. The flower happened to be in the perfect spot to be hit by the rays of the rising sun while the rest of the area was cast in shadows from trees. Once again, it was the light that caught my attention. Had I come upon it even ten minutes later, this shot wouldn’t have been there:

“Early Morning Poppy”

That concludes the “Choosing a Subject” portion. Next up: “Focusing on the Background.”

When I spotted this little poppy growing along the roadside, I was pretty sure I had a keeper waiting. The trick was finding the keeper. Although I only show a few shots here, in reality I took 18 photos over the course of a few minutes trying to get the photo right.

When I walked up, this is what I saw. Immediately I saw the potential: the flower was by itself with no grass really competing with it in the plane of focus. The sun was behind me, so I thought I might have a good backlit shot, and I LOVE backlighting. I think that a lot of people forget to turn around to see what the view behind them looks like; in this case, I walked right past the flower to get “behind” it.

But this is what it looks like from above (I bet you’ve seen a flower photo taken from this angle before):

The flower is kind of squashed closed, which makes it a perfect candidate for a shot at f/2.8. These are rare in the flower world, because the depth of field is so shallow. Any three-dimensionality means that some portion is going to be out-of-focus, but the flatter it is, the more likely you are to have it all be in focus.

So I move behind it. This is the view from that vantage point. You see that the road curves and that the flower is at the bottom of the embankment. The flower itself isn’t directly lit, but the bushes at the curve are bright with the setting sun:

The hard part is going to be lining up the shot perfectly so that we make the most of the brightly-lit parts behind the flower without overpowering the flower itself. Let’s take a closer look at what we’re dealing with here:

Ah, there is one blade of grass in the way! I moved it out of the frame (something I hate to do, but my rule of thumb is that if it could have occurred in nature, then it’s fair game).

But the first step is to get DOWN.

This was my first attempt. Gah, the brightly-lit road is bleeding into the frame something terrible.

I get even lower and try to get a bit of the bushes at the curve into the shot to see if they’ll make pretty bokeh, but at that distance, they’re just a smear of indefinite light that detracts from the flower itself. And I’m still not close enough to really use that aperture of f/2.8 to blur out the blades of grass effectively.

Oooh, this is almost there. I’ve adjusted the settings so that I’m now shooting at f/3.5 to try to get as much definition as possible out of the petals. Those blades of grass are still kind of distracting though, so I go back to f/2.8. So long as I nail the focus, I think the lens can handle it.

It all almost comes together in this attempt.  But I think there’s just a little too much blank space at the top of the shot, so we try again:

At last! I was honestly a little undecided during the post-processing phase whether I should go with this one, which is just a tiny bit too far to the left for my liking, or the one above. I post-processed them both but ended up going with this one. I just love the way it snakes through the frame.

I’ll leave it to your imagination to picture just how far down I had to get to take these photos. Suffice it to say that I had trouble straightening my knees after balancing on them so long on that asphalt. I had to try to brush the stray bits of grass and dirt from my hair before walking back into town. But was it worth it? Today my knees don’t remember the pain, and my hair is clean of debris. And I still have the shot!

And tomorrow: the processing!

There’s still a lot that my camera can do that I haven’t fully explored, so perhaps before I think about getting a K7, I should try to master my K200D :)

I decided to finally do catch-in focus. This is easiest to do with manual-focus lenses but can be done with auto-focus lenses if the correct contact is covered up (I haven’t tried this).

For my purposes, I used a Revuenon 55/1.2. Basically, I just put it on the camera and set the aperture to what I wanted (in this case, f/1.2). I manually focused to a point about .7 meters away. I put the camera in M mode so I could also control the shutter speed.

Next it was time to dive into the menu. On the K200D, you press “Menu” then the LEFT arrow to go to “Custom Settings.” Pressing the UP arrow three times will take you to the “Catch-In Focus” option, which is #22 on the Custom Settings menu. Next press the RIGHT arrow key. There are exactly two choices:

1 Off
2 On

For our purposes, we’re going to choose “On,” so press the DOWN arrow then “OK.” A quick half-press of the shutter, and we’re on our way!

Once you depress the shutter fully and hold the shutter button down, the mirror won’t flip until something comes into focus at that pre-specified point (in my scenario, the point exactly .7 meters away). I noticed that you cannot choose different auto-focus points even if you have that option turned on – you’re left with the center point. Also, the more slowly you can move something into the autofocus range, the better (although since I was dealing with such a huge aperture, the depth-of-field calculator tells me my range for having something in focus was only .01 meters!).

Because my photo was a self-portrait, I also used the 12-second timer and tried to keep the plant in position as I triggered the shutter with one hand and then moved into position for what I wanted the shot to be. It took me many, many tries to get everything right.

I’ll definitely be trying this technique more, particularly with macros.