Amateur Macro Photography

Normally you would think that taking close of flowers should be pretty simple correct? I mean really, you aim the camera and shoot. Well, learning to capture just the right angle, and/or the true essence of a flower is not as easy as it may seem. At least it is not for me. When I use to go shooting, I would snap a lot of pictures not really understanding composition, lighting (which I still don't) and so on. I seen something interesting and took the picture.

At that time I shot a lot but only ended up keeping a less than half. Now with my new camera it is even less. I took over fifty shots of "The Rose" before I seen one that felt like I captured something in the flower (I call it the flowers essence). I am sure the lighting may be wrong or something else to a professional photographer, but for me it looks pretty good.

I am currently trying to teach myself how to use a Nikon D1000 camera. Compared to my Fuji S1000 it is a lot harder. There is a huge difference between the quality of the Nikon pictures compared to the Fuji. When I took Macro photos with my Fuji it was just a matter of focusing on the flower at a close range and shooting. With the Nikon, I have a macro lens that goes onto the end of my regular lens. During this particular shooting, and trying to learn to take macros with my Nikon cost me about 87 pictures that all came out blurry.

At the time I was not sure why, but now I know and corrected the problem, at least I thought I did.

Sometimes when I am taking pictures, they come out like this.  I have a few pictures where the back and front edges came out dark, which is okay by me because I like it.  But it is not something that I plan on.

There is something very unique about photographing a flower with water droplets on it.  I was watching a video of a photographer giving tips and one he gave was to carry a small spray bottle with water in it to mist the flowers.  Isn't this is simple yet very rewarding tip? 

I believe I started doing this last year (2010) when I was shooting a picture of a rose and wanted an old time look with water droplets on the flower.  So I misted the flower and although it came out pretty good, it was not as nature as actually snapping pictures of flowers after a light rain, or in the early morning when the dew is on the petals and leaves.  

Actually, this is another one of those photos that happened by accident, but I like how it turned out.  Even with the little blur in the very front.  Let me share with you what I learnt from taking this picture.

1.  I hold my breath when I take macro photos!  So a bit of advance:  BREATHE!!

2. Using the screw on macro cap I get too close to the flower and ended up getting pollen or water droplets on my cap.  Now, I wear glasses, I have been told that when you wear glasses you need to focus the camera and click the button half way down than totally refocus and snap the picture. When I tried doing this my pictures came out more blurry.  So I took my glasses off and focused and shot and a few pictures came out okay.  So if you wear glasses, try taking a picture both ways to find the one that works best for you.

3. Practice!  I mean really truly I am finding that the more I practice, the better my shots are.  Don't just take one picture and assume that is the one and move on.  Take several shots of the same angle.  You can delete all of the extra photos, but at least you have a better shot of capturing just the right picture if you have more to chose from.