Close Encounters Of The Macro Kind

Colourful insects surrounded by beautiful and luscious greenery; Gorgeous, delicious fruits floating in water, covered in minuscule bubbles; A drop of water hovering over a pool of water, where colour is created by reflections. These images are what typically make up the macro photography genre nowadays. Of course, they are, among countless others, amazing photographs that are wonderful to look at, but what about them is new? Not much. Having looked through a couple of websites, there are only a small amount of photographs in the macro genre that are different and unusual.

I have challenged myself to attempt to take macro photography to another level, and find (and create) some photographs that are a little bit different to today’s typical macro photographs.

Abstraction is easy to create using a macro lens, but is not commonly found in macro photography.

The images that do exist, however, are of excellent quality, and more importantly, different.For example, below are a few images of this genre; as you can see, the subject is the same, but the way in which the photograph was executed, and the way the photographer has chosen to portray it, is unusual and much more appealing in my opinion.

“Abstract splash” by ilpavone2004′ (above) is my favourite photograph on this page.

The simplicity of it , and the eye-catching, almost blinding red background works so well with the isolated droplet, splash and reflection. In my opinion, it is much better than the typical water droplet image.

Again, “The Abstract” by missjessicajoy (above) consists of a typical subject, a flower, but the angle and the colouring are most definitely not typical. The thin, white, flowing strands make the flower look almost as if it were underwater, and the blueish tint also has this effect.

Although more minimal than abstract, this macro photograph by deedeephoto (above) is quite unusual and a nice change.

Having spent my time looking at numerous macro photographs, I felt inspired and determined to take my own macro photographs, especially as I only just recently purchased my own macro lens (a Sigma 70-300mm).
Unfortunately it is not true macro and only has a ratio of 1:2, but it does the job excellently.

Below I have picked the best two of the photographs I took:

This is a photograph of a plastic table top. Did you guess that when you first looked at it?

When taking this photo, I was certain that it would not come out well as I thought it was quite a boring subject matter; however, upon looking at the photo when it showed on the screen, I was surprised at how much detail there actually was in the table top that I had not noticed. In terms of post-processing, I used the ‘Curves’ and ‘Colour Balance’ tools in Photoshop CS3 to adjust the photograph. This turned out to be one of my favourite photos from the lot.

This is my take on a extremely overused subject; a cat. This is actually my cat Jacko’s leg; as I was taking the photo, he turned around and lifted his paw slightly. What a poser.

I played around with the colours on this one in Photoshop using the ‘Colour balance’ tool (I also used the ‘Curves’ tool); I did an overall colour adjustment, then selected the background only and edited that to bring out and emphasise the variety of colours.

And this brings me to the end. Perhaps some of you will take some inspiration from today’s article, and go out there and be different!

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

- Cecil Beaton.