Macro Photography Ideas for Your Next Shoot

I think it's a common stereotype in macro photography that the perception that all we do in macro photography is shoot closeups of insects, and the dewdrops on the end of a leaf, the tops of flowers, anything that's close that deals with nature. Well there's just so much more we can do with macro photography and have a lot of fun and create new photographs out of just simple props. And let's, we're gonna do one here this morning. I've got a romance novel, that I have borrowed from a neighbor that has any number of pages that have been marked, that have keywords in them. Like the word romance, the word love, companionship things like this. Cause we're gonna use those words when we place our wedding ring that we've borrowed again. And where we're gonna open the book, and in the gutter, place the wedding ring with my E-double flashlight behind it as a direct light source that is going to create a shadow of a heart, using the ring. And you'll see how this works. And I've just got a couple of other household items. I've got a bag of glass, that I'm actually gonna use it for another macro shot later. And I'm gonna open up the book, use those as weights place my ring in, and we're gonna get a really fun shot. You're gonna like this. So let's just go ahead and set this up. I'm gonna open up my book and place my weights, my page marker. So I have this here, my ring and I'm gonna move this light source around here. And you're gonna notice that this $8 flashlights it's a tungsten type, not an LED type. I'd like the tungsten type simply because I like the light quality better than the ones you get on the LED. Oh, look at that, right off the bat, I'm getting my shadow now, this direct light source is much better to use. And for example, if I thought, okay well you've got a romance novel, why aren't you using a candle? I'm not using a candle because the light source is evenly distributed. I need something that's direct, a beam, that can come in and create this wonderful heart that I'm getting here. Okay, so now let me find my word love there it is down here. So now I'm gonna slide this up on my light source to make sure that that beam is right, oh, look at that, right where I want it to be. And I move that ring to the point where I can see the word love. Because the reason I'm using that word love in there, is that I wanna have that tie into the message of the heart shape and the romance aspects of it. And I've got my light source right there. And if you notice that my light source is pretty close to this. And the reason I've got it close to is because if I move further away, the shadow becomes more diffused. The closer I am with this flashlight, right on top of this I get a very defined shape, a darker shadow. And then I've got the word love just below one of the shadows, so I can focus on that. I really don't care here if everything kind of goes out of focus. We have a couple of options that we can do, a lot of depth of field or a little bit of depth of field. And it's something that you can play with to decide which one you like better. I've got the word love, just outside of the shadows. I'm gonna focus on that. The shape is so prominent. It's gonna work on itself, all by itself and just let it play. So, spring in our macro lens and our camera, which I've got on a tripod, it's gonna be necessary to be on a tripod because the shutter speed itself is fairly long. And I wanna have that so I can come in right close to it making sure I'm not touching it. I'm using a 105 macro. And I like the magnification that I'm getting with the 105 macro, which is the lens that is the, you know the ratio on it is one-to-one, and I can get it a little bit closer. I wanna lean over a little bit more so I'm gonna extend this tripod leg. Careful, I don't hit my box, get my angle. I'm framing this up pretty tight. I'm not seeing the whole book. I'm just seeing the ring, the shape of the ring. And I'm actually focusing on the word love. Now, I'm using a low ISO because I don't need, a lot, a high ISO because I'm on a tripod. If I try to handhold this which I don't suggest because just your breathing movement with macro is gonna go in and out of focus. So get it on the sticks, get a low shutter speed, and I'm good to go. Now, one of the other keys in this is that I got tungsten light. So I can take my white balance and I can put it on tungsten light, which is going to allow my pages to be balanced for that light source. Which means they're fairly white pages, the white balance will be white. Well, if I wanna warm the shot up, you know, romance, love and I wanna warm it up, I can change my white balance and choose my own color temperature. Or you could, if you don't, if you can't choose your own color temperature in your particular camera model, you can put it on the cloudy or the shade setting and that automatically warms up your shot. So it's another one of these options that you can utilize to, again, Help sell the message of what you're trying to do. And in this particular shot, all I'm simply doing is kind of creating a kind of an e card for like say Valentine's day for my wife. So I'm just gonna focus on the word love. I've got a fairly shallow depth of field because I like the fall off of things going out of focus above the word love and below the word love. So instantly your eye goes right to that sharp spot. The message is still there because the shadow is still prominent. It's not gonna be a problem at all being able to see that. So it becomes a personal choice, how much you wanna have in focus, and how much you don't. So I'm going with a very shallow depth of field. And my exposure is pretty darn fast when it's like this because the light source is pretty bright. I'm actually at three 20th of a second here, at 2.8 here, and that's gonna be my shot, and oops. I'm just focused on the word love. We'll let everything else fall into place. Get away from the cameras source, all right, take a pic. Fabulous, she's gonna love this! To give myself another option, which you know, as long as I've gone through the hustle of setting this up, I'm gonna stop down as far as I possibly can. In other words, the smallest aperture I can get. Which on this particular lens, is 105, is F 45. And so at F 45, now, not only is the word love going to be in focus. I'm actually having almost the entire page now, what that depth of field will be in focus. And so consequently, with that smaller aperture I've also got a much smaller shutter speed now. And so now I'm at almost, almost a half a second here at F 45. So I'll take that shot. And I take that shot. And now the whole page is in focus. So if you wanted to read more of the texts, and the romance model and romance novel you've got that option. But other than that, shallow depth of field, I liked personally better, but those are two options that you can have to kind of create a different photograph of the same scene.