macro lens photography

Macro Lens Shooting Part 2

Photographs, river project

 

 

 

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Further experiments with the macro lens, using my phone torch again to see how lighting from different angles changes the photograph. I also took some videos of this, which I need to edit together and upload to Vimeo, so that I can upload them here. I felt a little more confident this time round using the macro lens, although I definitely need more practice. I need to find out when the next etching induction will be, as I feel these photographs would look really beautiful enlarged and etched- I envision a series of large scale prints of sections of these photographs, as these could potentially look really beautiful. I am particularly inspired by the work of Jo Love for this project, in particular her large scale drawings of microscopic views of various materials.

The first image shows the set up for the photographs and filming- a white sheet of paper taped to a chair, with the tripod and camera set up in front of it. This was the best set up I found, as the table was too high with the tripod on the floor, but the tripod was too high when placed on the the table. I played with the settings on the camera, changing the aperture, setting it to white fluorescent lighting, setting a 2 second timer to minimise shake from my hand pressing the button, and using the manual focus to get the look I wanted for the photos.

Test Shoot of Bones With Macro Lens

Photographs, Work in Progress

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These photos are from my first time shooting with a macro lens, borrowed from the CLS. My objective was to zoom in and get close up shots of all the textures of some of the bones I had found and cleaned from the river. Whilst these textures are visible to the naked eye you cannot see as much as when a macro lens is used. After about half an hour of trying with no clue to what I was doing I decided to ask the photography technicians for help- We messed around with the white balance and set a timer to minimise the shake on the camera, and this drastically improved the photos taken. I also used the torch from my camera phone at different angles to test how the lighting would change the images. I planned on taking more photographs, but unfortunately the camera battery ran out and I needed to return the camera, tripod and lens to the CLS. I am very happy with how the images turned out, as they are much better than I could have hoped from my first attempt with a macro lens, and I am definitely going to try photographing not just other bones from my collection, but also the plastic bottle, pieces of glass and ceramic, and pieces of wood and shell, to see how the macro lens will enhance and change what can be seen.