I was always interested in up close photography. So close that you can see things in a way you can not see them with the naked eye. This is probably what fascinates me the most about photography.
Macro Photography is such a thing. It opens up a whole new world to you. Seeing the fine details of the eye of a praying mantis, or the fragile canals of a maple leaf. It’s all there – right in front of you.
We tend to ignore this perspective mostly – but I encourage you to go flat on your belly in a garden or in a park and observe life up close. You will see so many new possibilities opening up to you.
Here is a macro photographer I always admired and I followed his work for years. His name is Ronnie Gaubert – a Louisiana based photographer.
Personally I shoot with a Tamron 90mm macro lens. It is one of the sharpest lenses I have ever used and I even use it for portrait work sometimes.I also bought a Nikon pn-11, which is an extension ring that you can put between the lens and the camera. This allows you to focus a lot closer and thus get into the zone of larger magnification than 1:1. In fact with the pn-11 you can get as much as 2:1.
The below shot was one of those 2:1 macros, which really shows you the detail you can get from this setup.
In case you do not recognize what it is (another artistic trick that you can use in macro photography), it’s the surface of a strawberry!
Fantastic Macro!