Hi. In this video, I’m going to give you five reasons why you should try macro photography.
Hi, I’m Adam and welcome to First Man Photography, the channel that will help you take your photography
to the next level.
If you haven't done so yet, please do subscribe to the channel.
There’s videos going up every Wednesday and every Sunday.
If you click the link down there in the corner, you won’t miss a beat.
Okay, let's get into this.
So macro photography is a very, very popular area of photography.
If you’ve never tried it before, let me give you five reasons why you should give
it a go.
Number one is you will discover a whole new world.
Macro photography let’s us discover a new miniature world with virtually endless possibilities.
Broadly speaking, Macro photography is about photographing small things close in and blowing them up larger-than-life.
The number of subjects that you have is virtually endless: things like flowers and bugs prove
very, very popular.
As many of you know, I also love my water drop photography.
Small things, such as water drops, often get taken for granted or go unnoticed in real
life but, when we use macro, you can freeze that moment in time and start to really appreciate
the beauty and create some amazing images.
When you start doing macro photography, a whole new creative world opens up to you and
you'll start to notice things are interesting and can create good images that were under
your nose the whole time.
Number two is it’s cheap.
Macro photography has never been more accessible and there is gear to suit all budgets.
So, a camera like this basic DSLR with a kit lens, is more than appropriate to start shooting
macro photography.
It is the same for compact cameras.
Just look for the little flower icon, on your mode dial.
Turn it to that and you will start shooting macro.
It may not be official macro but you can still focus in pretty close to start creating some
great images.
Additionally, you can also buy very cheap items like this macro reverse ring.
That lets you put any normal lens on back to front and that let’s you get in much
closer for that true, one-to-one macro shot.
We also have these extender rings which will attach to your camera.
You can attach any normal lens on the front and it puts a bit of space between the lens
and your sensor on your camera.
That let’s you focus in much closer.
They work well with prime lenses like a cheap 50mm lens, you might have lying around, and
these, on their own, are very, very cheap.
I would recommend getting one with metal contacts so you can control aperture and things like.
But, even so, they are still quite cheap to buy.
The next step would be to buy a true one-to-one macro lens.
There are quite a few available but you can get some really reasonably priced ones: the
Canon 100mm, for example, is about £250 to buy in the UK and with that you can capture
some very, very nice images.
You can also step up to the L version.
I’ve reviewed this lens before which is the one I use.
It is, truly, a magnificent lens.
I’ve also created a video before about shooting macro photography on a budget and it explains
some of these type of things in little more detail.
I’ll put a link up there for you to check that out.
Number three is you will start to develop your studio skills.
A lot of macro photography takes place in the studio.
It is not really any different to any other kind of photography with some of the things
that are important; things like composition, lighting, colour, tone.
If you're using all those things and putting them together in your macro shots, then your
work will start to stand out as just a little bit better than other people who are just
shooting things close in without giving it too much thought.
Macro photography often requires additional light adding to your images because, when
you get in close, the depth of field gets very, very small.
We often use high F numbers which reduces the amount of light coming through your lens.
So we need to add light to the scene and a great way to do that is through the use of
flash.
These two here can be picked up very cheaply.
I got these for about £10 on eBay.
So it is definitely not going to break the bank and, if you can get your lighting off
the top of the camera, to the sides, with the use of these wireless triggers, then your
images are going to become even better.
We can then start thinking about diffusing the light to bring out that nice soft light
from these flashguns onto your subject.
The images really, really start to progress.
Because you are doing things on such a small scale, it will allow you to practise your
studio skills with backgrounds, lighting, diffusion of light, all the sort of things
that happen in a normal studio, on a smaller scale so it becomes much more accessible.
If you then move in to do more studio work in bigger studios, all the principles are
exactly the same and they just scale up to that bigger studio with things like portraits
and things like that.
Because you have total control over your environment in which a shooting, you can also use it to
practise affecting your exposure.
You can also start to shoot in manual mode which will benefit you photography across
the board.
If you want to take the next level, invest in some items like these barn doors here and
this honeycomb.
Things like that will let you really control the direction and amount of light hitting
your subject.
Number four is the weather.
If you have been watching my channel for a while now, you may have seen some of my landscape
photography vlogs where I’ve been caught out on a number of occasions by the Great
British weather.
The rain is lashing through now so I’m going to have to show a little bit of dedication
today.
The beauty of macro photography is that a lot of it can be done inside so you don't
have to go outside and brave the wind and the rain.
The thing is though this is what it's like in the winter.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
You can't always guarantee good weather.
On those occasions, what I find, and I’ve said it before, is I will stay indoors and
do some macro photography.
If you are feeling the call of the great outdoors though, then macro is still the perfect thing
to do.
All year round, you’ve got things to shoot like snowflakes in the winter, to flowers
and bugs in the summer.
Number five is it can lead you into doing food and product photography.
The skills you learn while doing macro photography can act as an absolute gateway to other areas
of photography, especially, if you zoom out a little bit from where you have been in the
macro.
The skills you learn around composition and lighting, softening lighting, things like
that, will directly apply to food and product photography.
If you’ve been shooting macro photography for a while, you will already have much of
the equipment you need to start shooting those food product shots and, at the very least,
it will take your Instagram shots of your tasty dinner to the next level.
So, if I’ve done enough to convince you to give macro photography a try, make sure
you check out my series of macro photography tutorials.
They cover everything from the basics up to more complicated methods like focus stacking.
I hope you enjoyed that.
Please give the video the thumbs up if you did and I would love to hear from you.
Please leave a comment down below and ask any questions you have around macro photography.
If you have any problems that need solving, let me know and I will answer as many as I
possibly can.
Hopefully, we can answer some of each others questions as well.
I’ll see you on another video very soon.
I’m Adam.
This is First Man Photography…out.
Just look at that view at the top of Skiddaw mountain in the Lake District.