Saturday, September 5, 2009

Fun With Photomacrography

The other day I took the kids out in the Verano Garden's to search for bugs and take some fun pictures. They didn't all turn out perfectly but they are still fun to look at. I figured I would post a few here for fun
Note: photomacrography is just a fancy word for macro photography or close-up photography which usually tries to get an object to appear life-size or larger on a 4" x 6" print with no cropping or digital zoom.
All the pictures seen below are straight out of the camera with no digital cropping or enhancement.
Here is a picture of a Ladybug Carter and Parker found, I love these bugs.


Carter picked up an ant and wanted me to take a picture of it crawling around on his arm. The ant was very fast and between the ant moving, carter moving his arm around, and my limited stability, I couldn't zoom in very far to take the picture. Carter really likes to look at it though.



I had to wait a while for this Dragon fly to land but I got a few good closeups



This was a big nasty bug we spotted eating someones food in the garden. This is actually a big melon looking thing and there were seriously 10 or more bugs like this guy along with tons of flies, fruit flies and some other weird bugs going to town on it.



The boys spotted several butterfly's floating around but it was hard to get in close enough to take an actual picture. This one kept flying away but if I waited patiently it kept coming back to land on other flowers around me so I finally got a good picture.



I noticed a swarm of bee's pollenating the flowers so I trudged out in the middle of the flower patch and had a lot of fun trying to get these pictures while trying not to get stung.




After we were finished we sat around on the grass looking at the pictures then I decided to get a picture of Parker's eye. I think it is pretty cool how well you can see the muscles around his Iris. If you look closely you can see me in the reflection holding my camera up to his eye.
(click on the picture for a closer look)



Check out the eyeballs on this bad-boy. It looks like a brown widow to me but I couldn't get a closeup of it's belly to be sure. (click on the picture to get a better close-up)



All these shots were taken with an 18-55 canon lens mounted backwards to the body using a reversing ring on a Canon Rebel XT camera body. It was bright enough outside I didn't really need a flash but it came in handy on a few of the shots when you want a really fast shutter speed. The depth of field is limited because with the lens mounted on backwards I lose all control over the aperture settings but most of them came out ok. It would be a lot of fun to get a dedicated macro lens (hint, hint) but for now this is good enough for me to tinker and play with.

Thanks for looking, I hope you liked them!

9 comments:

The Hardy's said...

Great pics Andrew! How much would a lens like that normally cost? I went and searched our craigslist just for fun and found one on there for a rebel XT, but it seemed pretty pricey. $350

Andrew and Melissa said...

Depends on the quality, most macro lenses are in the $300-$600 range. Some of the higher end ones fall in the $1,000 dollar range.

Kelsey said...

That's awesome you guys! I'll bet the boys would love some of those blown up on their walls.. I wouldn't sleep at night.. but for boys- it's perfect.

colleen said...

I can see that photography is a skill that requires a lot of patience. Maybe that's why I am not very good at it. There must be some other reason why my kids all survived to reach adulthood.

Carl and Amber said...

I'm a fan of the dragonfly pic! Has the HA team changed?

Dani said...

These are so cool! I love seeing things up close like that, and the colors are amazing.

Anonymous said...

My favorite pic is the ladybug. Great photos! Did you take any photography classes, or is this all self taught and experimentation?

Andrew and Melissa said...

All self taught and experimentation for the most part. I have some other lab mates who enjoy talking photography with me so it keeps things interesting.

AaronsherriHatch said...

That is so cool, I was like no thanks for clicking on the spider picture for a bigger image. Lol