My macro journey

[Hatchdog]

Love that last shot with the head cranked sidewise. “I see you!”

[clovishound]

I've been experimenting with different techniques to control the look of the backgrounds in my macro images. So, I abandoned my flash and used a scrim to diffuse the harsh midday sunlight. This allowed me to have a brighter background than I would have gotten with flash. It also gives a different look to the image. I should have waited until later in the afternoon to get the sun more from behind me, than overhead, but there's always tomorrow. I did position myself so that there were some nice flowers several feet distant from the subject without much of anything else in the frame.

I liked this one, but found the thistle head on the right to be rather distracting.

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I am amazed at what the new remove tool in Lightroom can do with just a few clicks. It works extremely well on removing objects that are surrounded by blurry, amorphous backgrounds.

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[rickhem]

Amazing images, and you definitely have some high level skills to be able to capture them as well as you do.
Thanks for posting these up.

[clovishound]

Went out this morning with the Charleston CNPA group to the Clemson Extension Bee Garden. Very hot and humid, but we had a good time. Lots of flowers and plants as well as a small pond to attract lots of insects, arachnids and other critters. Saw some hummingbirds early, but I didn't get a chance to get any shots of them. Lots of dragonflies around the pond. Those were my favorite.

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[markiver54]

Thank you for continuing to share these wonderful pictures with us.

[Ernie]

It is an amazing world you are sharing.
Thanks

[Hatchdog]

Wow, just wow.

[daytime dave]

Excellent work. Thank you for sharing it.

[clovishound]

This is the biggest visitor to my backyard wildflower plot. I saw him out there late this afternoon and went inside and grabbed my camera. I've seen him out there before, but he has always run away as soon as I was anywhere in the vicinity. This time he tolerated me pretty well. I stopped about 15 to 20 feet away and started taking shots. I gradually inched up taking shots until I was near minimum focus distance, about 6 feet. I got down on the ground to get an eye level angle on him. Fortunately, it was late afternoon and the area was in open shade. Earlier in the day, I would have had harsh full sunlight. I would have like the foliage behind to be further away to provide a blurrier background, but you can't have everything.

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[CT_Shooter]

Beautiful! Love the backlit ears and the hyper sharp focus that extends into the foreground grasses. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't find an insect crawling around somewhere in that fur. Thanks for doing that photog-crawl to get these.