Digital Photography – Assignment No. 3

Macro Photography
A good lens can see things better than your own eye. In particular small or very small objects. Given the aperture can open much more than the human eye, with a lens you can isolate and draw attention to only the object you want while blurring the background (as with the chess pieces below). And lenses with greater focal lengths let you magnify something beyond your own ability to see it with the naked eye. This assignment focuses on Macro and close-up photography. So I will be using an 18mm lens for closeups and add a macro filter for the really small stuff.

The Requirements

• Requirement 1: Focus on the foreground. At least one of your photographs should be focused on the closest thing in the field of view to the camera and should contain out-of-focus elements behind it.
• Requirement 2: Focus on the midground. At least one of your photographs should have out-of-focus elements in front of and behind the subject you are focused on.
• Requirement 3: Bugs. At least one of your photographs should have a bug as its main subject. If you can’t find a bug, other very small animals are just fine, too. Keep it really small, though (dogs and cats are way too big, but little lizards could work).
• Requirement 4: Plants. Take at least one photograph whose subject is part of a plant – e.g. a flower, leaf, spine, some bark, a piece of fruit.
• Requirement 5: Man-made objects. At least one of your photographs should feature a man-made object like a toy, some circuitry, jewelry, etc.

My Take-Away
First, let me point out I failed to satisfy requirement number three. I simply could not get the bugs to sit still long enough for me to take a photo. I even offered to pay them, but no luck. That said, I’m thrilled at what I achieved. The truth is, there were several attempts at each of these. But with each attempt, I learned a little more. Like with a wide open aperture you will narrow the depth of field. Playing with that yielded some fun results. I also learned that the higher ISO you have, the “noisier” your picture will become. So there seems to be a need for a careful balance between exposure, shutter, and ISO. How you manipulate that balance is dependent upon your desired photo.

Thoughts?