Botanic Macros

So, back in August (yeah, I have quite a big backlog of photos to get through...) I waited patiently for a sunny day, and believe me, there were not many of them!   Once the elusive sunnyish day finally presented itself I took my camera (Nikon D80) and my macro lens (Tamron 90mm, f1.8) along to the botanic gardens and spent a couple of happy hours among the flowers (oooh, that rhymes!).   Now, the first thing to know about my photography is that I am very much an amateur!   Almost everything I know I taught myself.   I have never been to a class in my life, and there are only a very few things I have learned from friends.   I am still very much a learner!   Anyway, my macro lens is still relatively new and I haven't had a huge amount of practice with it yet.   Here are a few of my favorite photos from that day:

There were hoverflies EVERYWHERE that day and they were very co-operative and happy to pose for me.   I think their colours contrast very well with some of the flowers.

Quite proud of this one!   Very lucky/skillful freezing that one like that!

Unoriginal, I know, but i like it anyway.  :)

Doesn't quite captue how cool these flowers were!   They looked like black silk!

I have tried capturing montbrecia so many times and have never quite been happy with the results.   I have found capturing their fire to be surprisingly difficult.   Full sunlight definitely helped, as did getting right in among the flowers, rather than shooting from above, and also finding a plant to photograph with lots more in the background.


Things that worked during this shoot:
- The hoverflies.   They were great!   Loads of them about and not at all camera shy!
- The staff at the Botanics being very relaxed about guests getting up close and personal with the flowers.   I imagine this is far from the case in plenty of places.
- The weather.   It was worth waiting for a sunny day!

What I learned from this shoot:
- I'm never shooting in JPEG again!   I was quite shy about RAW up until then because of lack of hard drive space, but now with my shiny new computer I am a total convert!   There were so many photos I took that day that would not have been salvageable if they had been JPEG.   They would have just looked washed out.   RAW rocks!
- Wind is the enemy when taking macros.   WHY is so hard to get away from in Scotland??
- There is a very good reason why people recommend using a small aperture when shooting macros.  Sometimes very shallow depth of field works really well with macros, as it blurs the background, removing distractions, but it can also be very frustrating to take a photo and finding that only a small part of a flower or insect is in focus.


I'm so excited that Spring is now here once more!   I can't wait to use what I learned last year to get even better photos this year!