NZPhotographer Issue 46, August 2021

TELL US ABOUT ONE OF YOUR FAVOURITE
PHOTOS...
One of my favourite photos would have to be a photo
of the humble fly. It was the first ‘good’ shot I got when
learning macro and I did a few jumps of joy when I
captured it. This photo cemented my love of macro
and capturing images of insects close up! Incidentally,
it also led to a strange obsession – I love to capture
images of flies. I have many, many photos of all sorts
of flies. Weird I know, but seriously there are so many
different species with amazing colours in the fly family!
WHAT MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS CAN YOU
SHARE WITH US?
If you are shooting macro shots of insects out in nature
take a lot of shots, you can always delete them!!
Also keep up that shutter speed unless you have hit
that wonderful jackpot combination of an insect not
moving and no wind!!
Move in very slowly with insects and if you are
photographing dragonflies and want to capture their
image front on, move in from the side first and very
slowly move around to the front of them as they adjust
to your presence.
I recommend carrying little clamps to move stray
leaves or stems etc out of the way so you don’t have
to remove these things in post production. You can
buy macro clamps for this but I have utilized objects
from home, such as some hair clips and borrowing
some bendy wire from my husband’s shed.
If you are just starting to do macro be prepared for a lot
of blurry images and missed focus, macro takes practice
and it can be discouraging at first but stick with it! A lot
of people will say you must use a tripod for macro, I’m
a bit of a rule breaker in this area as I never use a tripod.
I much prefer having the freedom to move around
quickly and all my macro shots are handheld. I’m
lucky in that I have a reasonably steady hand and my
camera and lens have great image stabilization.
The Humble Fly
Canon EOS R, Canon EF 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM lens
@ F11, 1/50s, ISO125