Sunday, February 18, 2007

Magic Macro


Thanks to Bev at Burning Silo I persisted in trying to get a macro shot of snowflakes (check out this excellent webite) You may have to move your head a little to be sure you're getting the subtle light. The last time I failed to get a photo I could 'naked eye' some beautiful flakes because they maintained their form in the really frigid air. This morning it wasn't as cold and the holly leaves were graced by a cap of mealy looking snow. Determined to get a macro shot I wheedled a few shots out of my camera as I bumped snow on the lens and felt snow sifting over the tops of my boots. I was pretty sure I'd only succeeded in fogging up the camera and soaking my long underwear. When I got inside and viewed them, my suspicion seemed verified. Then I zoomed in and what do you know . . . .? Look at that. A snowflake. Just the whisper of one - but, a snowflake nonetheless. That flake is located almost dead-center in the bottom photo. Now I'm hoping it snows a little more. Who could have foreseen THAT?! (P.S. I don't know what I did to get this pix off center on my blog)

5 comments:

dmmgmfm said...

Wow, Cathy, those are excellent! Thank you!

Mary said...

Cathy, you are amazing. I can't get over the perfection of that flake. Awesome!!!!!!! It pays to experiment and get your long underwear wet.

burning silo said...

Excellent! That's a very starry looking snowflake. I hope you get a chance to photograph more of them. Another tip for shooting in macro mode. It sometimes helps to move your camera toward and away from your target a bit, and try tilting the camera around a little bit so that the focus of the camera may bring some parts of the object into better focus than others. You might not notice the different so much with a snowflake, but if you were photographing a frog, it might make the difference between having the head and body and closest legs in nice focus, rather than the leaf it's sitting on being more in focus. At first, it make take several shots of your subject to get a couple of good ones, but after you do enough macros, you can probably get it down to two or three. It's just one of those kinds of photography that takes a lot of practice to get down well. Luckily, with these digital cameras, it does't cost us anything other than our time.

Cuppa said...

Beautiful! Mother Nature is one talented lady isn't she? You two make a good team. She sets the canvas and you capture the beauty for us all to enjoy.

Bonita said...

Will cotton candy be next? I can just see the heavenly strands blowing in a breeze. No doubt we'll have to wait until the county fair in summer.