macro

A Visitor To The Wild Potato Vine /  by Todd Henson

A visitor to the wild potato vine.

In mid-July my father and I walked around the shoreline trail of Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I’m often drawn to the various flowers, many of which look very similar. In this case we found what I believe was a wild potato vine (Ipomoea pandurata), a member of the morning glory family, with their beautiful white flowers and deep pink interior. 

As I was attempting to find a decent view of a flower an insect, I believe some kind of bee, flew right into the one I was looking at. I then focused all my attention on that flower, getting as close as I could and attempting to see into the dark interior of the flower. The insect had flown in head first but by the time I had my camera positioned it had turned itself around and was facing me. I’ve photographed insects like this a few times and always enjoy the view it presents. Notice how the insect has its legs splayed out pushing against the flower to position itself.

Below is a slightly wider view to show the flower with the vines and leaves, and if you look closely, the tail end of the insect.

A wider view of the wild potato vine flower with the bee inside.

Tech Talk

For those technically inclined, I was photographing with my 105mm macro lens. It was an overcast day so I had my ISO up a bit to better see into the darker regions and still keep a high enough shutter speed for me to handhold.

For the wider view I used an ISO of 800, an aperture of f/6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/640. These were general middle-of-the-road settings while I was exploring the scene.

When I moved closer to see inside the flower it might have made sense to raise the ISO to better see the much darker region, but I didn’t think of that and was working fast before the insect left the flower, so I stayed at ISO 800. I was much closer to the subject so I had the foresight to stop down my aperture to f/9 to try to get more of the insect and interior in focus. The closer you get the shallower the depth of field. Stopping down the aperture helps get a wider depth of field with more in focus, and at this close range the depth of field is very small even with smaller apertures. But stopping down the aperture requires a slower shutter speed (ah, physics!), in this case 1/320 second, which I hoped was still fast enough for a sharp image.

In the end I’m pleased with how it turned out.

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Moss and Lichen on the Forest Floor /  by Todd Henson

Moss and lichen on the forest floor

Photographing through a macro lens can affect how we see. We may begin to notice smaller details in the scene before us, and find that even when we get very close there’s still an incredibly rich expanse seemingly hidden within such a tiny sliver of space. Of course, capturing what we’re seeing and feeling is another matter entirely.

While hiking trails through the forest in early summer my eyes kept moving to the rich diversity of moss and lichen in various locations. So I picked out one with a mix of color and texture and set to finding a composition. I’ve always struggled with this sort of photograph. What is the subject? There’s so much going on, and yet it’s exactly that complexity that drew my attention. So I tried to include as much of the color and texture as I could. I don’t know what those rust-red things are but I love how they stand out amongst the various shades of green, because of both their color and shape.

Looking back on it now I see things I perhaps could have done better at the time. I’m a photographer who naturally leans towards creating images with shallow depth of field. But an image like this seems to benefit from great depth of field. I knew this so I intentionally stopped down the aperture to capture more of the scene in focus. In this case I used an aperture of f/25, which on a typical wide angle lens might have done the trick. But when you get very close to a subject with a macro lens it becomes increasingly difficult to get everything in focus even with the aperture stopped way down. Granted, with this lens I could have stopped down more, but I’m not sure if it would have been sufficient.

So, what could I have done to increase the depth of field to make everything in the photograph appear in focus? Possibly nothing directly in camera. But I could have used a technique called focus stacking where I create multiple images of the same scene in the field, adjusting the focus just a bit for each image until I’ve captured the entire depth of the scene. Then when I get home I import all the photos into Photoshop and stack them together. Photoshop works its magic, picking the sharpest parts of each image and combining them all into one final, hopefully fully focused image.

I’m still pleased with this image. It shows some of the diversity of tiny life in a forest, and how there’s often so much more there than we typically see. But I also like to analyze my efforts so I can learn and grow, both in techniques like focus stacking, and in the more artistic side of how best to compose such an image. I find the artistic side the most challenging, and one I’m still working on, so today I chose to talk about the more technical side.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, whether technical or artistic, I’d be happy to hear them in the comments below.

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A Fly on the Rail /  by Todd Henson

A fly on the rail at a local wetlands park

When heading out to photograph nature with a long telephoto lens most photographers, including myself, would be on the lookout for wildlife of some sort: birds, maybe deer, a shy fox, perhaps. But I try to keep my eyes open for anything because long lenses work great for other subjects, as well.

I was walking along the boardwalk of my favorite wetlands park. They have a slightly elevated section with a larger observation area with railing and benches. I was heading down the boardwalk from here towards the section flat against the water with no railing. And just before the railing ended I noticed a large fly, sitting on the metal rail. It remained where it was as I walked by, so I turned around, setup the tripod, and began photographing this patient little subject. I liked the angle of the railing and the interesting light patterns in the background. And, of course, flies are always fascinating subjects when viewed closer than we typically see them. Click on the image to see a larger view of the photo.

If you’re curious about the technical details I was using my 200-400mm lens at almost 400mm with a 1.4x teleconverter giving a focal length of 550mm. On a crop sensor body like my Nikon D500 this gives a 35mm equivalent focal length of 825mm. That’s a fair bit of reach.

My lens has a minimum focusing distance of around 6.5 feet, and I’d moved in as close as I could get. I set the aperture to f/8 to give the photo a little depth of field but still completely blur the background. I probably could have stopped down a bit more and gotten more of the fly in focus. This would have dropped the shutter speed or forced me to raise the ISO, but I had room for both in this situation.

With the light conditions what they were I had the ISO set to 400, giving me a shutter speed of 1/400 sec. I don’t like to let the shutter speed drop too low with this long lens, even when on a tripod. Too many chances of vibration blurring the image. I have a mild case of essential tremor, so there’s always a risk of me introducing vibration, which a long lens will amplify. And the fly was on railing attached to the boardwalk, which can vibrate far more than you’d think when people are walking on it nearby.

When photographing in this situation I tend to wait for folks to walk by and let the boardwalk settle before shooting. Then I try to focus on my breathing to calm myself and relax. And I very often put the shutter in burst mode and shoot in short bursts of 2-4 shots at a time. This can be a waste of frames and creates many more images I must sort through when I get home, but it also increases the chances that one of those frames will be more in focus than the others, so it’s often worth the extra effort.

Next time you’re out in the field, whether photographing or just out for a walk, look around you. Really focus on your surroundings. What do you see that most of us might overlook and walk by? Is there a chance it might make an interesting composition if you had a camera with you? Practice this exercise as often as you can, train yourself to see more in the world. I do this all the time but still have so much to learn. I see photographers I admire create compositions I doubt I ever would have seen the potential in, and yet they create something absolutely fantastic. We can do that, too, if we better learn how to see.