NADIA BOROWSKI SCOTT / Union-Tribune
A cat's eye glints in the early morning light. (Click on picture to enlarge.)
Further resources
John Shaw's Closeups in Nature
John Shaw
Amphoto, 144 pages, $22.50
The master photographer discusses how to capture the intricate texture and details in nature.
Close Up & Macro: A Photographer's Guide
Robert Thompson
D&C, 160 pages, $24.99
Guidance on subject matter, creative ideas, equipment and accessories for shooting flowers, insects, fungi and patterns in nature.
Close Up Photography in Nature
Tim Fitzharris
Firefly, 111 pages, $19.95
Detailed guide on conventional and digital approaches and information on equipment, settings, angles and techniques for digital manipulation.
Learning to See Creatively
Bryan Peterson
Amphoto, 160 pages, $24.95
Tackles design, color and composition in photography with 170 photographs.
Watch for these Visual Cues:
March 1: Peggy Peattie on landscape tips and techniques
March 8: John Gibbins on wildlife photography
March 15: Nadia Borowski Scott on photography with a macro lens
March 22: Michael Franklin on using a camera under water
March 29: Don Kohlbauer on the rewards of shooting in black and white
Questions about Nature & Eye can be directed to (619) 299-3131, Ext. 1745,
or nature-eye@uniontrib.com
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QUESTION: What is the one thing you know now that you wished you had known when you were starting out?
ANSWER: You can get motion-sick by looking through a lens photographing up close! Either take breaks between sessions or take Dramamine.
Photographing the world up close is like looking into outer space. It takes a naive and fresh way of seeing the world under your nose.
I will never forget taking my interest in science quite literally onto the front porch of my childhood home in Silver Spring, Md., when I was 9. My parents bought me a microscope, since I'd declared I wanted to be a microbiologist when I grew up.
I let my microscope chill to the winter air outside, captured fluttering snowflakes on my cold glass slide, and held my breath – both to keep the snowflakes from melting and because the shapes I saw were so astonishingly beautiful, they literally took my breath away.
When I shoot up close today, I still like to think like a child, looking through the macro lens on my camera as I try to forget the literal qualities of the object I'm seeing and let myself get lost in the shapes, creases, highlights, colors and bends of what I see.
There is amazing science up close, when you realize the unbelievable detail or pattern in things around us. Let yourself be astonished and be playful when you see the world up close. The images will reward you.
While some rules, like composing a photograph in thirds or fifths, may give the image a sense of movement, I prefer to learn the rules, then break them, placing the point of interest right in the middle or on the edge of the composition. If you're digital, you can risk making more exposures than with film and let yourself enjoy more variations on your theme.
Each camera manufacturer makes macro lenses for their cameras. The thing to remember is that the longer the barrel of the lens, the greater the distance for light to travel and the more it eats up light. So while you can get even closer in on an object, you'll either have to photograph with a slower shutter speed, holding very steady, or you'll have to increase your light or your ISO or sensitivity to light.
You can get really up close, for instance, by adding extension tubes, literally hollow tubes, between your camera and the macro lens, but you'll lose even more light.
Macro lenses run anywhere from $350 to $1,000, depending on the length of the lens and the f-stop opening – the amount of light it lets in. I highly recommend renting lenses and extension tubes while you experiment with macro photography. If you love this kind of work, you can fine-tune your lens of choice and then decide if you'd like to buy.
The hardest part of taking the image of my cat Nigel's eye was being sharp at a very shallow depth of field, at 2.8, while he looked up. He sprang into the air a few times, landing once on my hand, and leaving me with a faint scar on my hand. But I liked the final photograph. It was worth it.
