This is a macro photography blog where I discuss macro photography from the point of view of a point and shoot camera owner. However, each weekend, starting this week, I shall be posting non-macro pictures, also taken with a point-and-shoot camera.

I call this series “When Not Shooting Macro, …” This week, the subject is “I Shoot The Sky”. Enjoy!

Posted in Sky 3 Comments »

This one will wait for you forever to take your shot. However, it might just decide to sleep and you’d be left with nothing but a hard shell and a trail of mucus.

This really is a picture of a small snail. I did not measure it but I would say, it was no more than 1cm in diameter. Captured macro with Nikon E5200, my first digital camera.

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The pictures below are among of the many flower shots I’ve taken over the years of shooting in macro. Flowers are relatively “easy” to shoot because unlike insects or other living things, the just stay where they are, giving you ample time to compose your shots.

But even then, this does not mean you can take it for granted. You still need to consider several other issues such as setting the right aperture to get the most desired results.

To put it in simple term, if you want everything about the subject to be in focus, choose the smallest aperture, or largest aperture if you want only certain part of the subject to be in focus.

Okay, I admit it’s not as simple as that — because you still need think about shutter speed and manual focus, if your point-and-shot camera has a setting for manual focus. However, varying the depth of field of a subject, is already a good concept to start experimenting with.

Posted in Flower Macro, Plant Macro No Comments »

One of the most viewed photos on my Flickr is this picture of a crow chick I found by the roadside one evening on the way back from work.

I had thoughtlessly picked it up from the roadside and took it home with the hope of nurturing it to strength and the to release it back to the nature. Alas, the baby bird died the next day. I’d learnt my lesson. I’m not going to ever attempt to rescue any stranded little birds again.

Posted in Bird Macro No Comments »

Spiders are among the most attractive creature for macro photography. Take this one, for instance. It looks so well-armoured and mean, like a battle tank that you could mistake it for a crab, had it not for its ability to spin web.

I’ve never seen this type of spiders before and naturally, it not only attracted my curiosity, but my curious lens as well. Perhaps, those behind the movie, Spiderman, should take a look at this one for an idea about how the man in red and blue suit would appear in the next installment.

You seen anything like this? Wikipedia has an entry of different species of spider. Maybe this one comes from the Arachnida class.

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When everything else fails — or when you think you have photographed everything — look under the shrubs.

That’s what I do when I go for an outing, when I thought there was nothing more to photograph and it was time to go home.

But this doesn’t mean you have to deliberately rummaged into the shrubs or turn stones over just to have a look what was beneath them so that we can take their pictures. That would be counter-productive.

I hold the view that as a photographer — taking pictures of nature at their natural setting, or any other subjects for that matter — it is our job to try and minimise disturbance to the subjects which have given us the pictures.

Here’s an example of life under the shrubs. I took this last week at the Memorial Park, Singapore, just opposite Swissotel The Stamford, the tallest hotel in Southeast Asia.

Posted in Insect Macro, Plant Macro No Comments »

One of the most dramatic macro shots I’ve taken, is this picture of an ant hauling a dead fly.

But it was not easy to frame this shot as the ant was bent on getting away with the priced trophy. To take this shot, I set the Canon PowerShot G6 to super macro recording mode, set the burst mode to “H” for high-speed (but still very slow at 1.8fps), set the dial to “P” for programme and set my mind, also to “P” for prayer.

Posted in Insect Macro No Comments »

One of the subjects that delights me most is the lalang grass or scientifically known as Imperata cylindrica.

Farmers hate the grass and treat it as nuisance. They can grow real fast and are very difficult to eliminate. You don’t just cut the lalang grass to kill them, as they would grow again the next day. What the farmers always do is to either burn the whole field or spray them with weedkiller.

But imagine for a moment standing among the field of lalang grass with their fresh flower clusters swaying in the wind, and you should be able to see beyond its reputation as a nuisance.

You’ll begin to see the potential for a very nice panoramic picture, depending on the landscape of the surrounding area.

Lalang dispersal can also be a nice subject for macro photography but you’d better pray the wind stop blowing while you frame the shot because just a slight drift would cause you to lose the focus.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »

Macro photography is about giving a new lease of life to what the eyes — and by extension the mind — take for granted in our everyday life.

It’s about looking closer at things and to be able to examine them — and to contemplate their existence — a little bit more with the benefit of seeing the finer details.

This series of close-up pictures are taken from my parents’ paddy field in Sabah, the Malaysian state on Borneo island. The paddy itself is about a week old.

I did not plan to take these pictures when I took my camera to the paddy field just before sunrise not very long ago.

Actually I had wanted to take a picture of the paddy field against the backdrop of a rising sun but was not satisfied with the results.

Then I saw the few remaining drops of water on the blades of the young paddy saplings. The rest, as they say is history.

I hope the pictures here would inspire you to go to the field early enough to catch the morning dew before they evaporate. A DSLR would have done a better job, but I had to make the best of what I have.

So, as you can see here, it was not just the early birds that catch the worms. Early point-and-shoot photographers too, can catch their own worms.

So, get out of the bed early, take your point-and-shoot camera out and explore the little universe in your backyard… up close!

Posted in Plant Macro, Water Macro No Comments »

I was up early one morning when I saw black spots on the wall in the living room. Wait a minute, they were not black spots, they were tiny baby caterpillars, less than 1cm in length.

So I took an A4-size paper, let them crawl on it and put them under the morning sunlight, whipped my camera and here they are.

I noticed that each time I put them under the sun so that I can have better lighting for my camera, they would huddle away into the shadow and would remain there. Two of them tried to venture into the sunlight, but quickly retreated.

After taking their pictures, and believe me it was not easy taking them with the super-macro mode on as they kept on moving, I took them downstairs and released them in the park.

Some of them might have survived and grown to become butterflies. If they were, there was no way of telling.

Posted in Creepy Crawlies Macro No Comments »