Thread: Macro mayhem!!!!

Yeah-- I can't believe how metallic and sharp those insects are, and on top of that just made the perfect industrial looking picture for me to shoot IMO

Even cropped up it still looks pretty nice, despite some noise



Such a clean and plastic coated looking insect. Almost machine like. I love it.



Anyhow, I took some stuff as the sun was setting.

Nice! The sunset colours look great. There are some really cute bugs in these haha, I love that super close-up fly, and the spiders and snails.

Hehe, yes, some bugs are just cute. The jumping spiders especially-- and how they actually look at the camera and pose for shots :B

Here's some I took after work.

Practicing TV (shutter speed) mode in high winds today.










^First pic of an airborne bug I've gotten!!!!

It's been a little while, how about some more 8) just took these today.

Those insects sure are getting it on.

Wow! I love the third one of the wasp.

Question - how do you find all those different bugs? All I ever see are ants and bees. :c

Yeah, two sets of mating bugs in one brief walk around haha o__o

And @Puffin: I just walk around slooowly and inspect everything closely, I've found bugs I'd never seen before just because I didn't let myself overlook anything. That's why on my photography "walks" I don't get very far, I spend a lot of time looking in the same area. I'm near a forest and it was rather humid today so that must've brought out the weird ones, I've never seen the ones in pic 1, 5 and 8 before.

Ah, cool. I wouldn't think there were that many bugs in one small area. o_O

And... I just noticed that the bug in the second last pic looks like it's grinning at me. xD

You'd be surprised by the amount/ diversity of species out there. I've seen the strangest things while hiking, like bugs that I would never have imagined possible before lol. From my experience they're mostly annoying/ scary but some can be pretty awesome too.

^^^ This. Many times I've been staring in a bush and a giant spider will be looking up at me that I didn't notice beside my head O___O

And these big grotesque flies with stingers with a long body, dunno what they are, but they scare the hell out of me.

Oh yes, thirded.

You just have to look, and you see the strangest things.

One time I watched this gigantic bee/wasp/something.... drag a huntsman in to a hole on a hill. It was super quick too. I've never seen a bee/wasp/whatever that big ever again. At least not in this country. We only have small ones. Except for that one big mother I saw lol

This one is fucking amazing. You got a high-res version of it?
I think I'd pay you for it.

Heh, unfortunately that wasn't my most sharp shot-- at least, close up ;( IMO it only really looks good zoomed out all the way. Here it is though: (background size would look decent too, just, for printing that one's iffy)

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/3217/freer.jpg

I'm starting to understand how to capture sharper details better now. I think my last batch was a big improvement in some areas.

Tomorrow I might get out again and explore deeper >:] TV mode is becoming my best friend. What I do now is walk around with TV mode set on, and if I happen to find something completely still I'll switch over to AV mode with F/8.0 set, so I can quickly get the same shot with a lot more detail.

Oh yeah, it is a little blurry. That's a damn shame man.

It's set as my background now though anyway

Oh yeah, it is a little blurry. That's a damn shame man.

It's set as my background now though anyway

Omg these pictures are amazing!
I'm so jealous of your photo-taking abilities.
I think one of my favorites is the one with the bee sitting atop a daisy.

I would definitely pay money for some of these.

Long awaited thank you to Savy I'm glad you like them.

Here's a rather weak bump... 2 pics from the last time I went for a walk, I BARELY have time at all, and won't for a long time I think, so yep.





I really like these ones though. The rest were bleh. They're better in hi-res as well-- probably that's why I like them, they're quite sharp in the larger sizes.

I'm just sitting here like :O as I go through the photos on this thread. These are absolutely brilliant. I wish I could afford a good macro lens.

There is a very seriously needed update to my macro photography thread.

Since using the 100mm f/2.8 canon lens for a year and a bit, i decided I wanted to get closer. Not 1:3 closer, as I might with some extension tubes, but 1:5 with the MP-e 65mm f/2.8 lens. This thing is a TANK

mpe5.jpg

Since getting this new toy I've been experimenting with macro scenes that I've constructed with just random scenarios and some carefully built with tweezers



First experiment with poppy seeds as characters/subjects. The idea of having a certain spice or certain small object thats consistent as a character in the macro world was alluring to me. I go deeper into this later on.






I'd love to try a similar setup to these again.




Skin on my knuckles






Back to poppy seeds for a bit... this time I wanted to really try hard to illustrate the seeds with an emotional quality, and almost human-like quality at times. I depicted scenes that in my mind were dated around the 1920s.
















I have a few more but I won't get around to editing them for awhile. I don't want to overdue it either with the poppy seeds, though they're so much fun to build scenes with!

Also, eyes are cooler.



That's all for now~

Are you growing those poppy seeds solely for photography?

Also is that gelati in a few of them?

Very cool man. You need to sell your photos!

Thanks Tommo I'm sure some of these would actually look really nice above a spice cabinet or in a kitchen, I wouldn't mind getting some good prints just to hang around my room.

They're just cooking poppy seeds, I wish I could grow some poppy pods of my own though would like to someday. Something about poppies, I just really like the hexagonal patterns on the edges of the seeds, and the pods and flowers look beautiful. Love poppies.

In most of the photo they are sitting on coloured marshmallows sometimes dipped in water, which i used to stick the poppies to the edges. For some, I used thin spices like fennel and rosemary and just random spices to see what would adhere the seeds best to them, especially for that one that makes them look like they're hanging.

Also the one where it looks like it's on a bubbly white cloud is on cauliflour.

Ah, ok, I just thought they were sprouting in this one, looks like it is anyway, which is cool.

:0
Wow these are flippin amazing!!! You really have a good eye!