I must admit that I’ve been a lapse of late with regards posting images on here IO guess life has just caught up with me somewhat not that I am going to dwell on it too much in this post as we all have life to deal with but I just wanted to appologise for not posting an image / update.
I’ve owned my macro lens Olympus 60mm Macro for a couple of years, slowly built up other kit for macro photography flash, home made diffuser etc but I must admit I’m a bit scared of macro photography. I don’t honsetly know why I guess maybe it’s the unknown bit’s of it like when to control the light, how much to control the light with the flash, focus stacking, focus bracketing it soon start s to bewilder me.
The above statement is rather strange as for a day job I work in IT so you would have thought the technicalities would interest me but if I’m honest when not in work I prefer the opposite side of things the simple life if you will, go for a walk see something I want to take a picture of and take it, then walk on… With macro there appears to be a lot of effort to put into getting the shot…anyway I’m waffling.
The above image came about as Catherine had mentioned about going out with the macro lens, I was umming and ahhhing about it as isn’t it always the case you go out with the big lens and see lots of small stuff and then go out with the small lense and you see a lesser spotted golden Eagle sat on a perch doing a square dance with an Osprey…ok maybe not but it always seems I regret not having a big lens when I have the small lens and vice versa.
Thinking about things and what to do I thought that if I make an effort with the macro lens maybe I’ll get to understand things a little better and laso enjoy using it so hence I ventured out with my Olympus Em1 mk2 and 60mm macro kit.
The day was going to be an early start and as I met Catherine at a local nature reserve she was all kitted out with her Sony camera macro / closeup lens attached and flash attached, my kit remained in my back pack – Catherine questioned why but I was not feeling the macro vibe and would get the kit out IF we saw anything.
Walking the field ther appeared to be lots of snails about but not much else oh other than the odd slug – this was not looking like it would be the day to turn me into an enthusiastic macro photographer. After walking around a mile with nothing much to see we made our way back to where we had entered the reserve.
About halfway back I saw a walkway into another fireld that we’d never walked in before so it was worth a shot to try it out in case it provided a shot or two.
Walking into the field it was like a differnt world hover fly, dragonfly abounded but didn’t really settle for a suitable shot, but at least it encouraged me to get the camera out and grab a shot of two.
After about 20 mins of chasing things around with nothing really settling we decided to walk back to the entrance of the reserve and think of somwhere else to try. Earlier on in the week Catherine had tried another area quite close by so we agreed to drive down to it and give it a try.
Anyway as we arrived at the siding, it was literally just off the side of a main road, there was grasshopper’s Crickets and dragonfly’s aplenty…again they seemed quite flighty so it wasn’t going ot tbe easy to get any shots.
The above image came about as it was one of the more friend;ly Dragonflys that we saw and it’d allow a couple of shots and then it’d take off and lad a few inch further down the fence post that it was on.
I knew I wanted to capture the dragonfly’s eyes as they really do intrigue me so was trying to get a focus bracket to cover the depth of it’s eyes and slightly beyond, unfortunately for the first three tries it just took off and wouldn’t play ball.
I was just about to give up before I thought I’m out here now just try once more and luckily it stayed put just long enought to bracket behind it’s eyes to give me the above shot.
I’m very happy with the shot after using Helicon to bring the images together, don’t get me wrong I’ll always pick fault (I don’t like it’s wings for example, but it was a windy day so awful conditions really) but as I’m still learning I’ll forgive myself somewhat and hopefully this will push me into trying macro more often.
