Nature Photography

LOL. I love that reference. Yes, it does have that feel.

I do not dispute that. It is this curse I have to know that I'm not Grace Kelly material. Not knowing it and believing otherwise is the only avenue to perhaps being Grace Kelly material. Only Grace Kelly can decide and she did by choosing a rich prince.

Even the colorblind can appreciate her beauty. I think the b&w photo is more elegant. But here this is:

This will give you a better idea of what kind of enlargement the macro tubes are cable of, as well the inherent limitations (or capabilities) of the camera’s lens and CCD.



Larger View

A gigantic penny for your thoughts. I intentionally used a beat-up old penny. This one is from 1970.

I don't know, but there's something about the center that I don't like.

Always the optimist. But that’s an interesting observation and I don’t take it personally. Many everyday objects that we see close up can be grotesque. That could be a coronavirus ready to burst forth and kill an unspecified number of people based upon its own internal DNA modeling. Many of the internals of flowers (pistils and stamens) are at the very least immodest in their gangular protrusiveness.

I think those internals will open up and the bees (also somewhat grotesque in closeup) will love them.

And as Mr. Flu Manchu intuited, that is the battle flag of the Bumblebee Brigade.

A flag with a burning soccer ball on it. Interesting.

You will forgive me a bit of indulgence in learning a new technique: focus stacking. There’s a good example at the link with the fly.



Larger View

I’ve never tried this before but have read about it. I always assume it was much more complicated that it was.

In any kind of photography, not everything in the frame of the photo can be sharp. There are limitations to the optics (and to our own eyes as well). There is a limitation in the “depth of field.” In macro photography, in particular, there is a relatively tiny depth-of-field.

Our eyes give the illusion that everything is in focus all-at-once because we can jump to any point in the world before us and bring it into focus. It’s a practical method and useful illusion.

But if you look at your thumb right in front of you (with one eye shut), you might notice that things in the background are a little more blurry. The optics in our eye have a limited depth-of-field just as a camera lens does,

And if you look at the previous shot of the Bumblebee Brigade flag (do so at the largest view), you’ll that the virus-like thingie in the middle is sharp but the petals not so much because (at least the forward-most parts of the petal) are not in the same plane as the virus-like thingie that so scares Timothy.

With “focus stacking,” you take two or more photos while your camera is bolted down solidly on a tripod. You change the focus point of each photo. The photo above is comprised of four shots combined. I focused first on the frontmost petal. Then on the virus-like thing of the front flower, then the virus-like thing of the back flower, and then finally one of the petals of the third flower you can see in the background.

I think this worked pretty good for a first attempt. This is all made easy to do using Photoshop but there is surely other (and free) software out there that will do this as well if you want to try it. And if you do want to try it, I’ll see if I can find out if there is a definitive piece of software out there (presumably for the PC) that people are most using.