Most photographs are taken with the camera at eye level. They show scenes or topics that are clearly visible with the naked eye. If you closely examine your surroundings, you will find a whole new world to explore. You will also learn that you may be able to capture topics with a creative vision: the details of which most people take no notice.
If you love nature: flowers, plants, butterflies and insects are ideal topics, though even daily items can become stunning when viewed in close-up. For example, try to take pictures of a cracked pot where a piece of plant sticks out to reach for the light, or ice crystals on a car window. With close-up you can reveal patterns, structures and textures, which you could normally not see.
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| You may not believe it: these structures are ice crystals! They form a consistent structure, except for the holes and the stream of moisture that left a 'path' on the window, captured with the camera set on F13. The golden light is created by the bright red sunrise behind the window on a very cold morning. |
For the focus you need to keep in mind that the depth of field is limited. Therefore, in many cases I use an aperture ranging from F11-16 or higher. Depending on the lens quality, you can experiment which lens aperture proves best for capturing pin-sharp close-ups. The higher the aperture number doesn’t always mean that you will get more sharpness. Bluntly spoken: the sharpness is spread out across the picture, but can be best on a lower aperture number.
My Tamron di macro 90mm performs best at F13-14, though the lens can handle up to F32. I once tested the same overall image, capturing it from a range of F8-32 in TIFF format (step by step like F8-F11-F13-F14-F16-F20 and so on). In Photoshop I zoomed in as much as I could and I gave every picture a score to find out the optimal aperture for this particular lens.
It’s essential to realize how you can use the aperture for the effect you desire!
The effect can also be turned around to get as less sharpness as possible, using F1.4-5.6, to highlight an exact detail within the close-up: a detail within a detail!
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| This poppy is blown-up by the macro lens. Only the stem and the centre of the flower (black) are pin-sharp, captured with the aperture set on F4. |
Try to be curious, using every day materials. For lighting situations you can use a flashlight. Though daylight combined with aluminium foil wrapped around a cardboard works just as well. I used this technique numerous times when I wanted to photograph indoors with a more natural sense of light.
And even a golden coloured plate, which I normally use to burn candles on, worked as a reflector to create ‘warm golden light’. In this case I used a tripod to keep my hands free for handling the reflecting material. Investigate and experiment!
