Tag: Macro Photography

Colour of Love

The Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography. #fpj-photo-challenge

The Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography. This week's theme is Colour of Love.

Bhavna and I do not celebrate Valentine's Day. From our perspective, it's a "holiday" invented for commercial purposes and has no basis in historical fact. It's no different that American Craft Beer Week or International Coffee Day. It can be fun to celebrate but we feel the original intent has been lost.

We also think it's silly to set aside ONE day in an entire year to express our love. What about the other 364 days?

Men everywhere will be bending over backwards, buying just the right expensive gift and bouquet of flower and planning the most romantic experience they can afford. I said men for a reason. My conversations with some American women have informed my opinion that they believe Valentine's Day (and weddings) is meant for them. They have very definite expectations. The more expensive the gift, the bigger the bouquet, the fancier the restaurant, the more the woman thinks the man loves her.

In the weeks leading up to the day, some American women will discuss what the boyfriend/husband did last year and what they hope he'll do this year. Then the week after, the discussion is about what actually happened and whether it met their expectations. I seldom hear what that woman has planned for their significant other.

Among some office men, the discussion is about what they have planned for their wives and girlfriends. I seldom hear the men discuss what the woman did for them. I sometimes wonder if their loved ones did anything at all. The commercials on television seem to enforce the viewpoint that Valentine's Day is for women.

My preamble was very gender-specific. This is not intentional, but I know very few LGBT people in my personal and professional life, so I can't form an opinion. My experiences and observations inform my opinions of the community around me.

So what is the colour of love? I think that depends on how one defines love. Each of us has our own love language. It’s the actions and words we use when we want to show them our love to others. It’s also the actions and words we want to hear when we want to feel loved by others. For each of us, the actions and word are different, both personal and cultural.

For some people, love is sensual and passionate. I think red is the colour that most closely aligns with that viewpoint. For others, love is placid and calm. The colour blue comes to mind. For some, perhaps people who have been abused or had back luck with love, love is caring but cautious. This could be reflected in the colour yellow. And yet, for people who have had a positive experience with loving relationships, love is gentle, kind, sacrificing and giving. This brings to my mind the colours lavender and purple.

But perhaps love is more like a rainbow, full of all the colours. There are times in a relationship when sensuality and passion play a role. Other times when tranquillity is the order of the day.

I had this great idea of photographing a rainbow this week. But it's winter. So I then thought I'd link the word love to beer and the colour of one of the types of American craft ale that I love; a cloudy, juicy East Coast style. But, I accidentally deleted the photos I took early this afternoon. Sigh. So ... this photo has nothing to do with anything.

This is a 90 image photo stacked macro.

Macro Fun Workshop with Loren Fisher

I've always been fascinated by macro photography, especially images of insects and amphibians. I sometimes spend hours looking at the work from some of the photographers I follow on flickr.

I had done some web searching and realized that while macro was interesting, it was challenging to do it well, and I possibly needed speciality lenses and other equipment. I wasn't sure macro was something I would want to do often enough to justify the cost of a dedicated macro lens. I bought a focus rail and macro extension tubes. The first set of extension tubes did not support auto-focusing or allow control of aperture. This made things difficult for me. But in my trial and error struggle with the focus rail and manually adjusting shutter speed, aperture and adjusting focal point, I learned a lot. You can see some of my earlier efforts on my flickr.

macro, flower, stacked Focus stacked image.

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I learned about focus stacking and perspective shift. I realized that I should have bought the more expensive extension tube (and I did) and that I could improve my focus stacking method by using software with my Mac to move the focal point of my lens automatically.

But I also learned that technique alone was not enough. I wanted help with ideas for what to shoot and "seeing" in macro. I wanted to learn what I could do while stuck indoors during the winter. Wouldn't it be great if I could spend some time with a talented photographer and instructor to help me find fun things I could do with macro photographs? Enter, Loren Fisher.

A few weeks ago, I attended a half-day macro photography workshop. Loren hosted at his studio in Somerville. There are about twenty students in the class, many of them I had met before at other photography events in the area. There were a few new faces. Some people had travelled from New York and other neighbouring states to attend the class.

oil, water, soap, macro, bubbles
Water, oil, and soap = macro fun.
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This was my first macro photography workshop and Loren planned a day of indoor macro fun. Loren started with a presentation explaining macro and not and giving us equipment tips and techniques. But more so, he wanted his students to experiment, to pay attention to what we were seeing.

Loren set up several studio rooms with different props and paired us off. One window lit room let in the winter day sunlight onto a bouquet. One interior space had a glass into which we poured seltzer water and photographed the bubbles coming off an inserted lemon. In another interior room, we photographed light through oil and water in a Pyrex dish. We photographed an antique bellows camera and M&Ms with the image refracted through glycerin and plexiglass in two more window-lit exterior spaces.

Kodak Planatograph 3 ¼” x 5 ½” f8/64 6 ¾” Lens by Bausch and Lomb
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I had a lot of fun with this workshop. Loren taught me that I don't have to wait for macro photography opportunities to come to me. What we did in the studio that day is easy to duplicate at home. When it snows or when I am bored at home but don't want to get outside, I can still create interesting photographs. And I don't have to go further than my kitchen window.

Using Macro Extension Tubes

I've had the Kenko Auto DG 12mm, 20mm, and 36mm macro extensions tubes for over a year, but I have not used them much. When I bought them, I was very excited but had little experience with macro. I still have little experience with macro. This summer, I experimented with shooting macros of sunflowers and insects, but I was not too fond of the results.

The Extension Tubes have no optics but extend the distance between the lens and the camera sensor. The result is that the sensor's focusing point is moved closer to the front of the lens. This allows a lens to focus closer than the natural focusing distance of that lens. This magnifies the subject, making it appear larger. This is useful for doing macro photography without a dedicated macro lens.

Recently I was reading some of the feeds in the WordPress Reader. One of the articles about macro photography inspired me to pull out my Nikon 85mm f/1.8 and my Kenko Auto DG 12mm, 20mm, and 36mm extension tubes. The Kenko DG extensions tube set has three metal tubes of different lengths - 12mm, 20mm, and 36mm - stacked individually or in combination to increase magnification. I wanted to test which set of tubes would work well with the lenses I have; my AF-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 or my AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8.

I wasn't sure which lens to use with the extension tubes, but I shot one image with the Nikon 35 mm f/1.8 and realised that the focusing distance was too short. The front of the lens was mere millimetres from the subject. The point of the extension tube is to be able to shoot close up and magnify the image. Because the 35mm already has a short focus distance, using the Kenko moved the focus distance so close, it was basically inside the lens itself.

Switching to the 85mm provided magnification but enough subject to camera lens distance to allow me to shoot closer. I chose “Mal” as my subject. I received the figurine in one of the Loot Crate I received last year. "Mal" is the name of the main protagonist from the show "Firefly". Firefly was one of my favourite shows until it was cancelled after just one season. I'm not sure why I enjoyed this show so much, but I've watched it several times on Netflix. Maybe I liked the characters because they were regular people just trying to survive in a dangerous universe. Maybe I like the show because the characters are very human, flawed. Mal means "bad" in French. The Firefly characters became like family to each other. And to me.

This post's featured image is the subject shot with my AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 without extension tubes. I then attached the 12mm and took another photograph. With this extension, I was able to get in much closer to "Mal". The magnification ratio with the 12mm is approximately 1.25. The image should appear 1.25 larger in my viewfinder.

Because the extension tubes also impact the depth of field, I adjusted the aperture to increase the depth of field for each tube. Doing this, of course, also increased the exposure times.  To keep things in focus, I shot these images with the camera mounted on a tripod.

AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 12mm extension tube
AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 12mm extension tube
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The following image below was taken with the 20mm extension attached. The magnification ratio of the 20mm tube is approximately 1.36. I was able to move in closer to Mal and fill my viewfinder.

AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 20mm extension tube
AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 20mm extension tube
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I swapped out the 20mm and attached the 36mm. I didn't test with the 20mm and 12mm together. The combined magnification is too close to what can be obtained with the 36mm alone. The magnification ratio of the 36mm tube is approximately 1.59. The difference in magnification is tiny.

AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 36mm extension tube
AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 36mm extension tube
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Lastly, I stacked all the tubes together and took my last shot. It's like Mal's is life-size and staring at me from right in front of the lens. The combined magnification ratio is approximately 2.79. Not at all 1:1.

AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 12mm+20mm+36mm extension tube
AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 with Kenko DG 12mm+20mm+36mm extension tube
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