BACK TO MACRO

In reviewing the kinds of photography I have been doing lately, I have noted that macro has not been a major part of it.  Instead, I have been shooting primarily art and architecture and some landscape.  I'm not sure why I have been neglecting macro, though patience (or lack thereof) may have something to do with it.  Macro in the "wild" is difficult unless the conditions are very good, which means proper lighting and little to no wind.  This is not a problem at the Mitchell Domes, so that has been where I have been doing most macro work.  Unfortunately, I have been there so often that I have a difficult time finding new possibilities.  Even so, I returned to the Domes earlier this week, determined to capture something new. And I guess I did.

A lot of the visitors to the Domes are there with their cameras doing the same thing as me, although I am generally the only one armed with a tripod.  In part, that is because macro often demands very narrow apertures, requiring long exposure times, and in part it is because I simply don't have a very steady hand.  Most of the other camera-carrying visitors are attracted primarily to the floral displays.  And I too found some, as in the following.

This was a real surprise, actually.  I had observed that this plant had abundant light leaves with pink margins, and then I noticed the very bright yellow blossom, which seemed so out of character with the leaves.  There was quite a bit of "junk" in the background and this was about the best I could do with the arrangement that I had to deal with.

Here is another "flower."

This erstwhile bud was actually quite small, perhaps 1/2 inch across, but I was attracted to the bit of water that the flower was holding.  I also liked that the background was relatively uncluttered and dark, helping to highlight the subject.  This was shot with an aperture of f/36 with an exposure of 2.5 seconds.

I was attracted to the following flower, not because of its intrinsic beauty but because it was set in a bed of plants that appear to have no botanical relation to it but that formed an interesting contrasting background.

And I think the following is a flower, though this is not really a macro shot, as the flower is quite large and was perhaps 5-6 feet from the camera.

I did like how the portion hanging to the left was being backlit by the sun streaming through the tropical dome.

The floral displays cry out the loudest for photography, but because of my penchant for abstracts, I am usually more attracted to leaf patterns.  These first two I confess to having shot before, but there they still were.

The following I think is new.  What caught my eye was the strong contrast between the various colors that the leaf featured.

The plant that has come to be my favorite is, I found out, called the peacock plant.  The leaves on this plant are actually quite large, perhaps 10 inches long and 5 inches wide.  That makes the photography easier, I suppose.  But the downside is that the plant is very low to the ground and the leaves seem to get "beaten up" easily.

Again, I have shot this plant a number of times in the past, but I still love it.

The following aren't macro shots, but I liked the overall compositions, particularly of the elephant ear leaves in the first photo.  These leaves truly were elephantine at 2-3 feet across.

I was attracted by the following leaf not so much by the its pattern as by the rips that had occurred.  This was actually a dead leaf that had fallen off a large overhead plant, and I took the opportunity to move it to a more convenient position for photographing, making sure I placed the tears over a dark spot to accentuate them more.

Finally, here is a shot of a vine that was hanging in an open area, making it fairly easy to eliminate background distractions.

Hopefully my next stop will be some macro in the "wild."

John