China Beach

Another abstract image from the Christmas tree which reminds me of the imagery of the far east. Either Vietnam era tropical trees silhouetted in rising sun, or ancient Chinese bamboo in the sunset.

I made these last several by pulling back with the macro lens and shooting from a greater distance than usual. The lens was out of focal range, but the lights and silhouettes made for some interesting pictures

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Rising Sun

A more abstract image of the pine needles against the blur of background christmas twinkly light. This one reminds me of the Japanese flag, and the poster for the movie Empire of the Sun. I've not experimented with the more two-dimensionally abstract side of macro photography before and think I should, after playing around a bit with images like this.

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Fake Plastic Trees

More of the oddly plastic-looking up close pine needles.

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Glitter

Glitter on a Christmas ornament, up close. Like a million tiny mirrors.

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Pine Needles 2

Another piney needley shot for the Christmas holidays. We'll be doing these all week folks.

I like how this one in particular looks fake and plastic green, almost like a Lego tree or something.

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Pine Needles

Pine needles close up, surrounded by twinkly Christmas lights.

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Snow Plant

This is a macro shot of a plant that reminds me of a snow flake.

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Ornaments

More bubbles in ice that look like Christmas ornaments; a seasonal photo for the Morning Macro photo blog.

I also like the explosive look of this one, the bubbles look like they've been ejected from the right of the frame, when in reality, they are literally frozen there. Fascinating that the ice froze over a period of time, not in an instant, and the result is still so active and expressive.

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Slurp

This little guy stopped for a drink in a cupped leaf. He was about 18mm long and a poor conversationalist.

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Swirly

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Here's a tiny snail shell, about a centimeter across, found on a pier in Muskoka, Canada.  I really like how detailed this tiny specimen is. No matter how small you go, there are still delicate details in the little things I've observed.

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Feather

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Another example of the beautiful patterns made by bubbles in ice. This image is so feathery, the bubble trails look almost soft. I'm always amazed at what I get to see through the lens when shooting macro.

The quality of light is important in these photos, as well as any photo. In this case, I was lucky that my flash setup wasn't doing what I needed it to, and I had to use the ambient available light, a mix of daylight and indoor incandescent. It was my good fortune that this light worked well to enhance the softness of the image.

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Sky Blue Sky

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

I probably should have been using a smaller aperture for this shot so more of the photo was in focus. At any rate, I think this dragonfly is beautiful and I love its colors.

I had to lay on the dock for a while, with several dragonflies hovering around, waiting for one to land within range of my lens. This guy came to rest close enough, so I scooted forward until it was sharper. The wood planks kept retracting my lens as I was trying to creep up, which made it a difficult shot.

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Silver Drop

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

More water on leaves. I love how the background turned out in this one. Nothing special was done to the photo in post-processing, the colors and focus is accurate to how it was captured.

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Chandelier

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Another ice photo. I admit, I love them.

They're beautiful and alien. This photo was taken at a point when these bubbles in the ice were just being released from captivity into the water. So they are emerging from the edge of the ice where the air was contained in long, tube-like snakey structures.

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In Cotton Candy

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

This insect was either a moth or a butterfly of some variety. I'm sorry to say I have not researched his species in preparation for this post.

There were many of these guys flittering around these little pink flowers, which take on the soft fluffy look of cotton candy in this photo. The fuzziness is due to my shooting at the widest possible aperture, and when fully open, the lens has a very shallow depth of field.

This cloud of flowers looks so plush and inviting, no wonder this little guy came in for a rest in them.

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Angel Wings

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Not actually angel wings. Cicada wings. Beautiful and delicate.

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Droplets and Oceans

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Here's another water shot.

I've said that I'm obsessed with water in macro photos, and I have the pictures to prove it. This will not be the last silvery glistening water drop picture.

My favorite detail on this photo is the little drops stationed on the spiky edges of the leaf. They're so precarious and fragile, and though their round shape could make them visually appear ready to roll off the edge, they maintain a weighted quality that belies their miniature volume.

The middle drop looks less stable, and indeed it was like a sea waiting to roll down the center gutter of the leaf in comparison to the microscopic droplets along the perimeter. Isn't it cool how we can see the shimmery pattern of the leaf texture through the big drop down to its bottom?

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Tiny and Tinier

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

I was shooting some midsummer flowers and found this little insect hanging out on one of the miniature flower stalks. He was maybe about 7mm long, and there were a number of them all over this particular plant. I don't know what they are, but after taking a look at the photos later, I realized how spindly they were.

Another think I noticed was that these flower stalks were covered with another insect as well, these were about .5mm to 1mm each.

You can see one of these little guys in this magnification of a section of the photo. See if you can spot more of them in the larger version at the top of this post. Again, I don't know what they are, but I'm kind of weirded out about them. What if we had taken a cutting from that plant into the house?

Actually, I've found that shooting macro photos of insects has made me far more accepting of them than I had been in the past. Perhaps it's because I have a view of what they are now, and can see what they're made of; the lack of mystery makes them less gross.

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Alien Life Forms

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

This is one of several photos I took of a bizarre fungal forest in Muskoka, Canada.

These little fungi looked like alien plant life; strange branchy things, something that looked like a tiny evergreen, odd Snork-like things with red bulbous ends. I loved how strange these little stands of fungus were.

As for size, they were only about 9mm high. This was shot in daylight using my 18-125mm and a macro filter attachment.

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Ice Creatures

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Another photo of ice filled with bubbles. The shapes these little pockets of air make inside the ice are incredible. You will see in some other ice photos that I've not yet posted, the bubbles--molded by pressure and time through the freezing process--make fantastic shapes. They often look like Christmas ornaments, bulbous, snaking, and silvery.

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Up In My Grill

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

This guy was a very patient insect, I believe he was a cicada.

I took photos of him from several angles, and like this one a lot. He seems to be staring at us, like the face of a parked truck. He was hanging out on a chain link fence in the middle of summer. The gold flecky stuff on the cicada's "face" is actually tiny little hairs, or something like it. They catch the sunlight in a beautiful gold twinkle.

Shooting things this small is difficult because the depth of field at this level of magnification is very shallow. As you can see in this photo, I only get about a half to a full centimeter of usable focus. This is partially due to my lens setup (a Sigma 18-125 with a Raynox 2.5x macro ring adapter and filter on the front), and partially just the nature of macro photography. Generally speaking, the more light you can get on your subject, the greater amount of depth of field you can gain. But there are limits to everything.

I think I shot this photo with no added flash, so that accounts for part of my problem with the low depth of field.

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Rush Hour

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Dew drops line up on a tiny leaf. These droplets were about the size of BBs.

I shoot a lot of water and ice. The way light bounces and refracts inside of them is fascinating to me. I love how round these little balls of water are, how they look ready to just roll right off the leaf. So different than the pouring, splashy water we know in the world of bigger things.

This leaf was about an inch or smaller in real life.

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Sunrise

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

Welcome to the first post in a series of macro photos, the Morning Macro.

I thought it would be fun to show these tiny worlds which are often easy to overlook. I'm fascinated with how different everything looks under such high magnification, so beautiful.

I will try to post these regularly, the name of the blog implies daily. We'll see about that ;-) In any case, thanks for visiting!

Above, you are seeing a macro photo of ice, up close and personal. Part of the charm of a good macro photo is an interesting method of lighting. This was inside a colored plastic cup and the flash came through the colored side to light the scene.

I love the soft focus and glowy lighting of this image.

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