Photography can cover extremes in technique and dimension, from wide angle shots of expansive landscapes, to long exposures of the sea to the high speed capture of birds in flight. One area that up to now I have not explored is the world of very small things, otherwise known as Macro Photography.

Macro presents a few unique challenges that make it one of the harder genres of photography to master. Firstly, by definition, the subjects are very small, and this typically means the camera lens has to be very close up - maybe 2-3 inches away.

Secondly, special lenses are required that focus this close - called, unsurprisingly, Macro lenses. Being so close means that it is very easy to disturb the plant or insect, so getting a still subject is a challenge. And even if the leaf or flower is still, insects still insist on moving their legs about, making sharp pictures difficult. This means that the macro photographer can take literally hundreds of images before getting a portfolio quality shot.

Finally, the physics of lenses means that when very close up, the area of the subject in focus is very narrow, so it is very hard to get the whole subject sharp.. There are two solutions to this: firstly narrow down the lens aperture to increase the depth of field (like screwing your eyes up to see tiny detail), or secondly taking dozens of images, all focussed on different points on the subject, and then combining them in a method called “Focus Bracketing”. The first reduces the light to the lens enormously, so requires a flash to be used as well. And the second involves stacking 20-100 images together in a complex process. All of this is in addition to the other aspects of photography, like composition, colour etc.

It turns out that for lots of technical reasons, the Olympus and OMD cameras are perfect for Macro photography, and in fact are the choice of very many macro photographers who can use any brand they like. And once you have the camera, the lenses (or some of them) and ancillary equipment are not too pricey. A detailed post on why the OMD cameras are so good for macro will be in a later post. So I armed myself with all the kit and started taking Macro pictures in England and France. The photos below are what resulted. I hope you like them.

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