Hand-Held Macro Photography

Hey all – Rob here…

Since starting photography in 2004, May to August have always been my most productive months. There are plenty of subjects to choose from: birds, amphibians, flowers, insects, landscapes… On weekends, I’d often head out before dawn to the Ile Bizard marsh to photograph birds, frogs, turtles, otters or other marsh residents. When I don’t feel like getting up before dawn, I’d set up for macro photography a little later in the morning.

This year? Man, oh man… May, June and July were cool, very wet and windy. Montreal had record amounts of rain in July (4.6 inches), with some rainfall on 26 days out of 31 days. You can forget about going to the Ile Bizard marsh for bird photography in these conditions, as it will be very quiet. And windy or very sunny conditions make traditional macro photography extremely difficult.

With changing weather patterns, bird photography has been getting inconsistent at the marsh. I cannot control this. But there are always insects to photograph, and these critters are what I turn to in order satisfy my need for photography. This summer, with either too much wind, rain, too much cloud, or (ironically) too much sun, even insects were hard to photograph.

How bad has it been? Well, excluding the images taken at the Green Mountain Workshop in June, my number of “keeper shots” from start of May to end of July was 19… Only 19!

Mating Japanese Beetles
Canon EOS 5D MkII
Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro lens with Canon 500D diopter
Canon 550EX flash with Micro-Apollo diffuser
f/16, 1/100s, ISO 400
Hand-held

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Posted by Rob under Equipment,Flash,Lenses,Macro,Summer,Technique | Comments (10)

The Bug Hunt

I love this time of year for photography, particularly since developing a taste for macro and insect photography.

 
Canadian Tiger Swallowtail
Canon EOS 20D with Sigma 150mm f/2.8 lens
1/200s, f/8, ISO 200
Gitzo G2220 tripod, Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead, cable release

As you probably know, I’ve been doing photography for a little less than four years. Until last year, my main spring and summer subjects were birds. The problem, for me, with bird photography is that: 

1. You need to get up really early at this time of year in order to be in position before sunrise… The first two hours after sunrise are typically the most productive, and the light is gorgeous. At this time of year, the sun is up at 5:00AM, which means that, at the latest, I’d need to be up by 4:00AM. On a Saturday or Sunday. Yuck.
2. Now, point 1 would not be so bad if I always came back with good shots – except that I’ve been finding that bird photography is less and less predictable, partially due to the changing weather patterns in the last few years. Last spring, I did that “get up early, and be at the marsh at sunrise” thing for four consecutive weekends, and the results were disappointing almost every time.

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Posted by Rob under L'Ile Bizard (Quebec),Lenses,Technique | Comments (1)