Macro Nature

When an aspect of animal behaviour is captured this beautifully, it’s hard not to be wowed. The lighting, composition and uncluttered background all combine to make the most of the situation. The drop of honeydew hanging from the ant’s mouth really helps to tie everything together. With the help of a reversed lens and a teleconverter the photographer has managed to achieve a frame-filing shot with real impact.

This picture has a real sense of atmosphere – it feels like the viewer is a bug on the ground immersed in a wonderful, spongey environment of moss and greenery. The effect has been achieved using a Helios 44-2 58mm lens – a popular choice amongst flower photographers due to the swirly bokeh you can achieve with it. This has been paired with an extension tube and a wonderful dash of creativity from the photographer.

There’s a great sense of three-dimensionality to this image, mainly achieved by expert focus stacking (this enables you to increase the zone of acceptable sharpness by taking a series of pictures – each concentrating on a slightly different focal plane – before blending them together to create a composite image). In this case the photographer has used Zerene Stacker, but you can use other software (it’s also worth checking if your DSLR has an in-camera focus stacking option). It’s also a wonderful study of greens – it’s amazing how many tones are in there!

One of the great things about macro photography is just how much you discover after the image has been captured! Here the photographer admits to being pleasantly surprised at the level of detail he/she captured in the tiny insects and flowers growing along the shoot. The background is far enough away from the subject to have been recorded as a pleasing wash of colour. It’s beautifully done.

Waiting for the sun to backlight the hairs on the little caterpillars has resulted in a beautiful, graphic image. The shadows make wonderful patterns on the banana leaf and the exposure is bang on. Personally, I would have removed the small tears in post-processing – it wouldn’t have changed anything significant about the scene and, at present, the light shining through them is quite distracting. It’s wonderfully observed and executed though.

It’s tempting to show all of your subject when it’s this small but closing in on a section can actually be more effective. By prioritising the front section of the insect over the full wings, for example, our attention is drawn to areas we might otherwise overlook. The antennae, for example, displays different colours and ridges. The use of negative space is also perfect.

Dandelions are a popular subject with macro photographers, and it’s easy to see why. This image has been particularly well thought-out. Showing half of the flower encourages us to complete the other half in our heads, which gets us involved. The rain highlights all of the detail and the way it has been lit gives it the appearance of a chandelier. Beautiful.

This aphid moving along the edge of a rose petal really stands out because of the clever use of complementary colours (green sits opposite red on a traditional colour wheel). It also works due to the pin-sharp focus on the insect – you can see all of the details on the legs and body. The bug only takes up a small proportion of the frame and yet it attracts most of the viewer’s attention.

The butterfly here looks as though it’s riding a wave – it’s an unusual, and highly effective, composition. The photographer hasn’t been afraid to ramp up the ISO (800), and this has facilitated a shutter speed high enough to freeze any movement from the leaf and insect. It’s the perfect compromise.

I’ve seen hundreds of shots of damselflies peeking out from behind reeds and grasses, but few that have displayed this level of symmetry and technical mastery. The photographer has garnered enough knowledge to know that the subject will be reasonably still in the morning and this has paid off. By focus stacking the images, the insect is rendered wonderfully sharp from front to back.

This opportunist hairy-footed bee has taken up residence in a keyhole and it’s incredible how well the colour of its body matches that of the door furniture! The house belongs to the photographer and it just goes to show that you don’t have to travel far to get striking macro shots! Every hair on the bee is super sharp due to the choice of aperture (f/16) and the texture on the metal surrounding the keyhole really stands out.

There’s a gentle fairy-tale quality to this image, but it’s actually harder to achieve a shot like this than you might think. Firstly, finding mushrooms in an aesthetically pleasing group that hasn’t been nibbled or trodden on is quite hard. Secondly, lighting the group can be tricky – the best subjects are often in dark patches of woodland. Thirdly, mushrooms can look a bit, well, static. The photographer has overcome this by lighting the common bonnets from behind and spraying them with water.

I love this shot of a ladybug eating lice, but it pains me that it’s not a touch sharper. The focus is on the head, which is as it should be, but it would have been great to see more sharpness on the body and the lice. Having said that, the aperture selected has thrown the background out of focus beautifully, and the gap between the ladybug and the lice, is spot on. It creates a lovely feeling of tension between the predator and its prey.

Adult mayflies have a super short lifespan, so it feels very special to spot (and photograph) them. This one had recently emerged from its larval stage and would soon be making its way to the riverbank (with luck!). The background is beautifully rendered – we get a lovely sense of the colours of the surrounding environment, without being distracted by details. The level of detail captured in the mayfly itself is astonishing.