Macro Photography Challenge

 

Imagine what you would do if you had absolutely nothing standing in your way. (tarot.com)

Wouldn't that be great? Just pretending it, helps to free the mind :)

.....only to realise, of course, after this little holiday in your mind you "then, return your focus back to your current situation" (tarot.com)

While taking the recent water drop macro shots, it took me more than 3 hours for one shot getting close to what I had imagined, catching the drop just right after it leaves the leaf.....about 3 hours and more than 1000 shots later.....not much editing done yet which was another couple of hours to sort out the 50 best, then reduce these to the very few best of each scene (meaning going to 100 or even 200 % in photoshop with each single image in order to see the difference) Phew!!!! I do not really like this bit of the job, to say the least.

Apart from that this experiments took me perfectly to the limits of photography. Going high quality, choosing 100 ISO, then I could forget about capturing the action of the drop falling anywhere near sharpness. The moment the drop leaves the leaf, the leaf moves, because it is releaved of the weight of the drop. Plus the falling drop itself is incredibly fast. So I tried fast speed, which means about 1/2000 of a second, which also meant to increase the ISO in that light situation to 2000 ISO. Here the quality limits of digital photography become visible. The highlights start to burn out. So I just went with the effect, thinking of Man Ray's early darkroom experiences, and took the whole leaf into overexposure mode, which gives it this silhouette effect.

Am pretty happy with the result, although it is nowhere near what I tried to do when starting out with this experiment. If anyone knows about how to do this differently, I would be grateful for a comment?!


Read more about Detail and Macro Photography
Timeless Wisdom about Photography - Best Quotes

View my images
New Zealand Gardenworld


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