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Macro Focus stacking 22 www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 17 April 2010 subscribe 0845 676 7778 www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com
Focus stacking Macro David’s awardwinning photograph ‘Hey Good Looking’ is made from 61 separate source images Canon EOS 40D, Canon 35mm bellows, 1sec at f/4, 0.04 increments, - 2 ⁄3EV, mag 3.5x, ISO 100 Macro masterpieces David Vennings tells Bob Aylott how focus stacking can turn your close-up shots of insects into works of art working from a country barn in a remote part of the Isle of Wight, David Vennings has a lifestyle more akin to a professor than a retired director of engineering for the lighthouse authority Trinity House. The solid oak door creeks as it opens up a bizarre isolated world of extreme close-up photography. ‘Dead flies are absolutely fascinating,’ says David, as he leads the way into his studio. ‘Seeing the detail in the bodies of these flies through a camera lens is amazing. The colourful clarity is an unimaginable scene. It’s the same with flowers, too. When you look at a geranium in the florist window, you would never conceive its true inner beauty’. David has an eye for beauty, which, if you couldn’t glean from his tastefully decorated home, you could surely ascertain just by looking at his award-winning image ‘Hey Good Looking’ that scooped the Isle of Wight Photographer of the Year competition in 2009 (this page). At the awards night, David’s image of a fly’s head was of such superior quality that it had other photographers’ heads shaking in disbelief as they tried to work out how he did it. ‘It’s simple,’ he says. ‘Using a focus-stacking software technique, I’ve stitched a bunch of separate images together to make this final shot.’ David took up photography just four years ago, yet unlike most amateurs who long to take beautiful landscapes, he developed an obsession for smaller subjects. ‘I was drawn to macro work by a combination of the level of detail I can get with subjects you don’t often get to see up close, and my love for gadgets,’ he says. ‘Maybe it’s my scientific background that attracts me to the apparatus required for this super-macro work, but I enjoy building the rigs that are needed for this type of photography.’ His ‘rig’, as he calls it, is impressive. Built from MDF using glue and brass subscribe 0845 676 7778 17 April 2010 I www.amateurphotographer.co.uk 23 www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com
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