Indoor Macro Photography Project For Rainy Days
By Brian Auer • April 1st, 2007I mentioned yesterday that I got outside with my macro lens and shot some photos of the miniature daffodils in the backyard. Today I wanted to do some more, but it was raining outside and I didn’t feel like dealing with the water. So instead of going outside to take photos, I brought outside in with me.
I remembered an article a while ago at the Digital Photography School called Photographing Autumn Leaves - DIY Studio. I hadn’t tried it yet, so I thought today was a good opportunity. But instead of autumn leaves, I used spring blooms. I grabbed a few specimens of blooms from various sources and headed back inside to get my studio set up.
After cleaning both sides of a window, I taped my subjects to the glass and set up the tripod. I left the tripod legs at their shortest so I could get close to the window with my macro lens — actually, it was a sliding glass door so I could use the glass all the way down to the floor. We have some pine trees about 20 feet outside of the door, so they would provide a nice green backdrop for my shots.
I took about 60 shots by varying my angles and running through a bunch of different apertures. Why not? I was inside with my camera on a tripod and my subjects weren’t going anywhere! I ended up getting about 5 or 6 shots that I could really work with.
The photo below is one of the ones I processed today. I like it because of the colors and the back-lighting, which make the specimen somewhat translucent. It looks as if it were taken on a sunny day outdoors, but I assure you that it was done on a dark rainy day just as I described above. I also used an overlay blend with a Gaussian blur to give it a softer and more surreal look.
Photo of the Day…
Photo by Brian Auer
04/01/07 Flemington, NJ
Red Tree Blooms
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Sigma MACRO 105mm f/2.8 EX DG
Kenko 25mm Extension Tube
158mm equiv * f/32 * 30s * ISO100
Brian Auer is a photography enthusiast from San Diego, California. He's also the guy behind the Epic Edits Weblog. As a hobbyist photographer since 2003, his passion has been to constantly improve his photography skill set, to share his own knowledge with others, and to become an integral part of the photographic community.
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Really good photo! I like the bluriness of it and the contrast. Check out my photography page on my blog. Hope to see more from you.
- Brandon
zoominwheelchairs.com
zoom zoom.
Thanks Brandon. I’ve been looking at too much of Michael Brown’s stuff — I think he’s starting to wear off on me. I took a look at your photos. I like the black & white “gate” picture. It’s kind of chaotic in subject matter, unsettling with the slight tilt, dark and gritty because of the overall tone — plus it’s black & white. I love black & white. Nice work, keep it up.
Still reading through your site
That is a great photo!
Awesome Job! Fantastic photo . The tips and news are great.You would need to have a very clean window because any dirt would be in the same plane of focus as the Red Tree Blooms.
I really find B. Auer work lovely.Hope to see more from you. Always at look…………………