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Macro Photography
Yes the world up close, a step back from micro this is freelance macro photography. As was said before usually Freelance Macro Photography takes an expensive camera and a Macro lens with the magnification ratio of about 1:4. Not today though, we are going to be using an inexpensive digital camera, and don't tell anybody this but you might be able to take a better macro photo with a digital camera then with all the expensive equipment you would normally need. Now and days digital cameras have the zoom quota met when it comes to magnification power. Not only that, most cameras also have a great auto-focus, which enables you to half cock the button down while it steadies itself for the Macro shot. I'm not trying to make it sound easy because it's far from it at times, and can be very frustrating if your hand can not hold the camera steady long enough to take the picture.
-Keeping the Camera Steady- -Using Flash-
-Camera Positioning- -Angles-
-Inverse Linear Depth Perception- -Spherical Depth Perception-
-Position and Angle-
Steady that Aim!
If you're anything like me, I sometimes don't set time aside to take my freelance digital photos I just happen to come upon something that makes me inspired. I don't always have my stand so I have to capture my photos with steady hands. We might be telling things you already know, but we think it's very important to learn how to keep your hands steady.
Usually its best to tense up your arms but I have seen people able to relax and take the picture, so you really have to find out what's best for you. I hold the camera as if I was trying to break it, I pull on each side of the camera and I find a point where the camera stays steady from an even amount of pulling force. It may sound strange but it works for me. Also you can take the wrist strap and wrap it around your hand a couple times and this also keeps the camera steady. If the subject is low enough, set your elbow on your knee and that will act as its own stand.
Of course if you had a stand that would work great too, but sometimes a stand isn't the easiest thing to use especially for macro photos due to there precise angles. I suggest learning how to shoot with your hands even if you do have a stand.
To Flash or not to Flash?
Obviously the question at hand in this section is: Is it okay to use flash and if yes when should I use flash? Well by flash we are talking about the burst of light when taking a picture. And the answer to your question is... you have to be the judge, but most of the time no. Flash is very difficult to use and here is why. When taking macro shots it can create a lot of shadowing because the flash will be so close to the subject at hand, making it hard to cover the whole macro piece in light. Flash might be needed in some instances, like taking digital Macro pictures inside a house or building, where there is not a sufficient amount of light. In order to solve this problem take the picture on a window sill or with a window open. If you don't setup the flash properly you will get a very contrasty picture of darks and lights.
If you have to use flash, a trick when using the flash indoors is to put a white piece of paper on your the other side of the subject which you are shooting this will bounce some light back and hit it at almost every angle.
If you use flash too close to an object you will get the reflective burst if the subject in question is shiny or glossy. The simple thing to do is take a thin piece of paper, place it over the flash part of your digital camera and take a practice shot. If it is still too bright fold the piece of paper over and repeat. Also make sure that the piece of paper is white or you will get a oddly color flash. By placing a piece of paper over the flash will cause the light to weaken and it wont reflect nearly as much, making a better looking macro shot.
You can use natural light in substitution of the digital camera flash, such as from a window, just make sure you have a mirror (or if you don't have one handy) just use a white piece of paper. Place it on the opposite side of the window in order to reflect the light evenly on the subject. Do not use iridescent lighting ( the lighting of a normal house hold light bulb), unless thats truly the look your going for. When shooting macro photographs with iridescent lighting you will get a sepia look, or a look commonly denoted as more beige and yellow-ish, but if that's how you like to shoot em' then your indoor lighting should be a slice of pie.
Macro Camera Shot Positions
Now that you got your light, you now need some good positioning. Well to get started lets talk about a few things like perspective points. A point of perspective is a coordinate in the freelance photograph that is in focus. This coordinate contrasts the rest of the picture, and the other points on the digital photograph, because these points will not be in focus. This shows the depth of the photo, and gives it an easily understandable 3rd dimension. For an example if you were to take a picture of the tip of a pencil pointing towards the camera, then the tip would appear in focus and the rest would slowly go out of focus. This in turn would show how close the tip of the pencil is to the camera, and conversely how far away the rest of the pencil is. I agree that was a terrible example but hopefully you get the idea. Also not every macro subject has a perspective point, generally if you take a picture very close up then sometimes the whole object consumes the photograph, which would yield no perspective point.
The types of perspective points are as follow: Anchor Left or West, Anchor Right or East, Anchor Top or North, Anchor Bottom or South and finally Anchor Center. This simply means what part of the photograph has the point of focus, if it had a perspective point of Anchor Top then the 'in focus' photographed subject would be at the top of the picture and fade in another direction but not always. Just so there is no confusion remember we are talking about the placement or angle at which the picture is taken, not to be confused with the angle of the subject/object.
The whole box denotes the camera capture area and the smaller boxes is where the object resides in the photograph. 1) is anchor left/west which means the object sits in the first box. 2) anchor top/north. 3) anchor right/east. 4) anchor bottom/south. And the circle means anchor center/middle.
I provided some more poor examples and yes that is the cleanest penny I could find on my desk at the time. I don't think they need much explanation but as you can see the first one is anchor center, the second is anchor right and so on. By the way I just flipped them in photoshop and I didn't use very good lighting... sorry everybody for my laziness, but I think you get the idea.
The object or subject Angle and Linear Depth Perception
Object angles show the viewer of the photograph linear depth perception, now linear depth perception only applies to objects that have relatively flat angles, like a pencil, soda can, book, television, clock, tons and tons of things. And technically almost anything can be linear when taking a macro photo, what we are referring to is which part of the object is in focus and where it starts to go out of focus and 'linear' means: going out of focus in a straight line. If the object goes out of focus at one point and goes back into focus at another point it is not linear depth perception. Almost everything is shot in linear perception, because it is very difficult for a camera to capture two perspective points in a single photograph. To get to the point we are not going to talk about perceptual photography arcs, curves, parabolas or (which I have never seen) Hyperbolas. If you didn't' notice already we are going to be using the old math skills, don't worry though a basic level of linear algebra would be nice but its not expected, and most people will understand the general concepts without knowing tons of math.
With that out of the way lets discuss the coordinate plane: It shows two lines intersecting on labeled x one labeled y, left side of x is negative (-) and right side is positive (+), bottom side of y is negative (-) and top side is positive (+). Pretty simple. There are many angles in which you can play the object... You could put it in the center without an angle just a straight on, no perception shot which would be at perception coordinate {0} and would not even need to be said. If you placed the object at an angle with the right side in focus by the camera and the left side the most out of focus, then that would be at perception coordinate {x}. If the object was angled with the top most in focus to the camera and the bottom most out of focus that would be perception coordinate {y}. Step it up a notch... If the angle was positioned with top right corner was the focus point to the camera, and the bottom was the out of focus point it would be {(x,y)(-y)}, heres why: the top corner is both positive x and y and the bottom is just negative y (-y). So what would bottom right corner fading out to top left corner be?... Well the bottom right is a positive x and a negative y, then we have our first coordinate (x,-y)(remember to always put the x before y), for the second one top left is a negative x and a positive y meaning: (-x,y) therefore: {(x,-y),(-x,y)}.
Now you're probably asking what does this have to do with photography... well this should show you. I used this flash drive I found on my desk, hey, it was all i had for an okay example, anyway I used it to show the different angles at which the object could be in relation with the perception coordinate plane.
2) The second one (top right) would have a linear depth perception of {(-y),(y)} or more simplified {-y}, because the point that is most in focus is the bottom of the object and it slowly fades out of focus going toward the top.
3) For the Third Macro Photograph it is simply {(-x),(x)} = {-x}, once more the left side is the point of focus as it slowly fades over to the right.
4) And for the last one (bottom right), it is {(x,-y),(-x,y)}, and for the explanation you can see the bottom right is in focus and goes out of focus at the top left. I am pretty sure you got it now. One last thing about the coordinates, if it starts in the middle and fades in another direction it is (0,x/y).
By the way after I put these photos on, I noticed horizon lines which are those out of focus lines in the back of the picture which is the curve of my desk. Anyway this is also something to watch out for because sometimes the pictures may look really bad if the horizon lines don't make sense. For example picture number 4 looks fairly bad because the horizon line is too abrupt and shows the picture taken at an angle. Unlike number 3 which represents what I was going for exactly. It is just something to watch for.
Inverse Linear Depth Perception Digital Macro Photography
So this is more of the same stuff, although this is quite a bit more difficult. Before we were taking pictures with a given angle where the focus point was at the closest part of the object to the digital camera. The inverse is where the opposite takes place, and the macro photo focus point is on a part of the object furtherest away from the camera. Now this is difficult because generally a macro setting on a digital camera tends to focus on the part closest to the camera itself. Real quick we will go over the Macro Linear Depth Perception notation. So if a photograph was taken with the bottom part of the object closest to the camera and the top part furthest away *** with the furthest part in focus *** this would be ~{-y} or the negation of coordinate negative y. Another Example: ~{(x,y),(-x,-y)}. Pretty much the same but the extra negation outside of the brackets refers to the inverse state of focus. Therefore the notation stays the same only a the negation sign will always be added to the outside of the brackets.
On to the technique, like I stated before inverse macro pictures are hard but stick with it if your really looking for that look. A method is (it is almost taking advantage of the cameras flaws) to mash the lens very close to the subject's inverse focus point and try to get the rest of the object to auto focus. Also, you could change the cameras focus point/points and change it so the focus box is in the correct position. I wish we could tell you how to do that but we don't know what kind of digital camera you might have, but check picture taking settings and it might be under auto-focus. The last way (which might not be accessible to everyone) but narrow your aperture, so you can focus on things further away. (check the Lights Section).
More on angles and Spherical Depth Perception
The last major type of depth perception in freelance digital photography is called Spherical. This type of depth perception deals with one focus point and a focus fade in almost every direction, but technically it just has to be 2 or more. Before we were talking about objects that could fade in one direction but what if you took a picture of a ball? If the ball was close enough it would appear as if the top was focus and the rest wasn't. Not to mislead you but tons of things have spherical depth perception, anything with only one focus point and more than one direction of depth fade would be spherical depth perception.For my example I found a rusted box to shoot, this digital macro photo focuses on a corner of the box and it begins to fade everywhere else. This is a great way to capture a photograph to show the grand scale of a small object, and really give it some life.
Position and Angle... yes, at the same time.
Well, to recap: we have learned position which is the placement of the camera and what part of the shot you want to capture your subject in. The sections in which the subject is capture is called an anchor point. And we learned angle which is how you angle the photographed subject to give the viewer a sense of depth perception, and this is denoted by a coordinate plane and linear depth perception. Now we're going to put those two concepts together, if you understand everything so far this should be a breeze. Combining the two may result in a well done photograph if you give it some time and thought. Just to explain it before we look at examples, combining the two methods would be choosing the points of linear depth perception and choosing what section of the photograph the object sets in. If you have a linear depth point at {x} (which means starts at the right and fades out of focus to the left) and the anchor is center this would mean you have a photograph with the object in focus at the center of your picture and out of focus at the left side of the picture. I will now show the examples (yes I'm reusing my examples).
In this first macro example we have our original subject centered and fading out of focus to the right meaning: anchor center {-x}, the second one is also {-x} but the macro focus is in the left which means anchor left.