Back in 2020 I received a macro lens for Christmas, which was a bit of a blessing for it gave me a new area of photography to explore. Welcome to a whole new and challenging realm of photography! Well, the year 2021 only had two great adventures. One obviously being the two weeks in which we traveled to Wyoming to visit a few National Parks. The other was a quick over night camping trip in the Adirondacks for our son's birthday. The rest of my time was being stranded here at the apartment complex or trying to tame the two acres of land my husband owns but can't afford to build on. So when I wasn't busy homeschooling and doing all things domestic I broke out that new lens and scoured the yard for something to photograph close up! So Mama's new toy is the Irix 150mm Macro! This is a fully manual lens. The aperture opens all the way up to f2.8 so it is a light sucking monster, I mean that in a good way! Through this macro lens I able to view world's within worlds or so you could say. I recall photographing a daisy while trying to get the focus right, I noticed a fly and a teeny tiny white spider. The spider, despite being much smaller than the fly was winning the battle of life over death and all this played out on the pretty Daisy! Never having noticed white spiders before I did a Google search and discovered that this was a White Crab Spider. It's color is the perfect camouflage for living on a Daisy. Now I know why my Mom wasn't overly thrilled when I brought home wildflowers for her. Can you see the smile on the spider's face? As you know I love wildlife photography, but never really considered the fact that you don't always need a long focal length to do so. You can capture some pretty wild wildlife with a macro lens. For example an entomologist would love this Irix 150mm f2.8 lens. I have seen other photographers with a love of entomology on Instagram make gorgeous photos of insects but there are other wild critters to photograph in which a macro lens would be quite handy It rained a lot here on the east coast last year. When it rains the slugs come out to play! Okay, so maybe slugs are kind of icky and very sticky but I thought they made for some interesting photography and entertainment for the kid.. I found a slug stuck on a daisy! Other great creatures worthy of macrophotography are mollusks like snails, amphibians such as newts, toads and frogs. This idea delights my son! He loved being my assistant catching my subject and putting it back whenever it decided to hop away. Yes, his walls are covered in pictures of frogs and toads! One of the biggest challenges I faced was getting my subject perfectly focused. As a nature photographer I work outside where the wind blows and most of my macro subjects were either flying or swaying on a leaf! My other challenge was I typically did not use my tripod, which ironically was usually in the car. The same car my husband takes to work with him everyday. Hopefully I will get more use out of my tripod this year. I did delete a lot of blunders but hey there is learning curve to everything. You might say that I would be better off with an autofocus lens for macro, but I disagree. Do you know how frustrating it is when your autofocus just keeps continually trying to focus! With manual I found if I could get close to full focus and then wait for the moment that the wind or breeze would stop or slow a moment I could lock in focus, wait for the next opportunity and then bang, bang bang! At least one of the shots would be just right! One day my son's frisbee went into the bushes but he refused to go get it. "Mama, Mama, come quick, there's red bugs and ticks all over!" I am glad he did not retrieve the frisbee on his own. We have had to pull too many ticks off of him, including from inside his very deep belly button! Once I calmed him down and took a few photos of the mysterious red bugs, I did a Google search to identify them. I did not study entomology but evidently these are red aphids. I could see a few ticks too. Sometimes I photograph unpleasant things just to learn about them.
In few images I took there was what I thought was a tiny bee hovering over the flowers. It was actually very pretty so I thought. Unsure of what it was exactly I shared a photo in a Facebook group asking if anyone could identify it. All answers revealed that it was a Hover Fly. I tried to take photos of an ant colony too but that was gross so I deleted most of those photos. I will however leave you with a half dozen pretty flowers in hopes that spring will arrive soon! |
Julie MetottNature Photographer, wife, mother, lover of outdoor adventure! Archives
November 2022
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