Macro Monday 30, purple wool

I have missed my Macro Mondays. My last one was September 17, almost 8 months ago! How time flies. Michelle helped me with that shoot, and with this one, though she wasn't present today. She supplied the chunks of wool, and I picked a purple one to start with. If you're curious about the equipment used, follow that link.

This first one is at 1x

3x

4x

5x

And this is 5x with 68 mm of extension tubes. No idea what the actual magnification is.

Driftwood of the Day

Macro Monday 29, hair revisted

Some time back I took some macro photos of hair,  here, and here. It wasn't quite as complete as it could be. For one thing, the hair was still attached to the person. This creates obvious limitations on what you can photograph.

All these macro shots were at 5x with my MP-E 65mm macro lens, shot with my T6i which has a crop sensor factor of 1.6. So I don't know what the actual magnification is. All I know is that the hair samples were a small fraction of a mm in diameter, and on screen I'm seeing 5 to 8 mm in diameter. None of the photos are cropped. From the top to bottom you are looking at at about 2 mm of hair length.

Michelle has been excited about macro photos and managed to collect some hair samples. (I'm told nobody was harmed in this process.) Here she is, hard at it, working to focus on a hair in my high tech setup in the basement. She hadn't realized just how sensitive the whole process is, and how just breathing on the camera produces a visible wiggle on screen.

Strand from A

Root from A

Tip from A

Strand from K

Root from K

Tip from K. (this was brutal to capture.)

Root from M, brown

Kinky strand from M, brown

Tip from M, brown. (Again, difficult to capture.)

Root from M, silver

Strand from M, silver

Tip from M, silver. This one was easy, not sure why. Sometimes you get lucky.

Here I am, hard at it selecting and editing the photos. I'm not sure why I have my hands cupped together like I've captured a small animal. Yes, I need to clean off my desk. Later today. First things first.

I have a particular hair project in mind, but the tricky part is coordinating schedules with the people involved.

Macro Monday 28, The bee in the Dahlias

The light was nice and the bees were still a bit sluggish, so there I was with the macro lens. The bee photos are about 2.5 to 3x magnification. The actual lens, for my newer readers is the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro.

What was funny is that the bees sometimes move like crazy in their work. There were a few shots that have the dahlia stuff in perfect focus, yet the bee is a blur, and it's motion blur not plane of focus blur. Fortunately it was calm out so the flowers aren't moving much.

We begin at the beginning. With macro photos it's sometimes hard to understand what you're looking at. So here is a close up of the lovely orange dahlia that has just come into bloom.

1.

2. A close up of the petals, to start getting the knack of hand-held macro photos again.

3. For some reason this reminds me of Curtis, sitting and looking at something with a vague air of mildly concerned interest.

4. It only took about 200 shots to get this, and I think this is the money shot. It's not quite as nice as Mr Travis Bee from last year, but I'm pretty pleased.

5. I included these other shots because I'd have been happy with them if they were the only ones that turned out.

6.

Macro Monday 27, the lily and the ants

I haven't done a Macro Monday for a while, and this was sort of accidental. We had the black lilies out front almost destroyed by hail just as they were coming into their prime. I was so disappointed. They're a difficult shot because of the colour.

Then I realized there are some growing in a bed along with the Dread Alberta Rose, and they're doing quite well. Unless the hail comes from a really weird angle (knock wood) they should be ok. I was working on capturing the texture, preferably with ants, then realized using the extension tubes would work really well. I'm not sure why the ants were all over it, since they hadn't particularly been on the ones out front. But you'd think these were peonies from their enthusiasm.

So here you go. First a regular photo to set the stage.

Two similar shots, capturing the lovely texture, and ants with their cute little hairy butts. You'll have to embiggen, of course, or squint really hard.

That yellow glow was almost radioactive, lighting up the deep inside of the blossom.

I passed over this one at first, since the ants are out of focus. Then I thought about how far an ant's butt is above the surface it's walking on, and realized how much I liked the texture of the petal. It struck me this was a good demo, once again, of how narrow the plane of focus is in the macro world.

I found this one later on. These are the black lilies out front, before the hail.

Macro Monday 26, should've been 25

Part of the challenge, and fun, of photography is to come up with ideas and go hunt for the corresponding photo. A blog is always looking for ideas, and ways to tie things together. So for instance, it's snowing really hard out today. We've had several cm of snow already. (Sigh, and more expletives deleted.)

I didn't have to go anywhere, and I didn't. There I was, busy with a coffee, a cat, and a laptop, when I had a sudden idea for Macro Monday 25. The idea will become obvious shortly. However, once I edited the photos and looked at my blog it turns out that 25 was a few weeks ago. No tie in to 25 at all, unlike what today's blog would have done.

A quarter is 23.88 mm in diameter, or just a hair under an inch for those who think that way. It's made almost entirely of steel, with a bit of copper and nickel, and yet it's all scratched up. I like the texture it gives the photos.

March Image of the Month

That was a tough month on the photography front. I am getting darned sick and tired of winter. We had lots of snowy and generally cold and crappy weather so I wasn't out as much as I'd have liked. Still there are a few nice photos. The winner was fairly easy, but I'm having trouble picking out the runners up. There are 5 that I like, each for different reasons.

I'd looked at them this morning, but couldn't make up my mind. Then we were off to brunch with some friends at Blackfoot Inn. As I digested I considered more, and wrote a bit while thinking.  In the end I thought of which I'd most like to see printed.

For second runner up, a bridge of wine diamonds in the neck of a wine bottle. I'd never seen that before. I've no idea what I did to get the surrounding blues, and tracery of blue in the diamonds. I'd like to tell you I cleverly added a blue laser to the setup, but no. Once I was done the wine, the bottle went downstairs to meet the macro camera.

First runner up. Some might think this prosaic. A coffee mug. Meh. This is one of my favourite mugs, thrown by Connie Pike in High River. I was sitting inside about to take a sip when the morning light caught the mug just right and I started noticing some of the detail in the glaze. A few minutes later I was outside with the mug and camera. The shot actually took a bit of doing to get just right, so I was in and out several times looking at images on the computer rather than the camera. Afterward I took it downstairs to the macro camera setup for a closer look at the glaze.

And our winner! I was out hunting for some specific dusk images for a writer buddy of mine. Along the way I crested a hill and saw this. You can bet I got the car stopped as soon as possible. Some of you might recognize those old combines in the bottom corner.

Macro Monday 25, the business end

This is an old, old tool. Millions of years old. This is a 5x shot of the business end of it.

 The tooth is from a megalodon, and is about 6 cm long. It isn't especially sharp, which is sort of too bad. I was hoping to see how a razor edge on a tooth would show up. I also have a smaller shark's tooth that has a sharp point, but the problem is hanging onto it for the photo. It isn't very big.

Macro Monday 24, in my cups

I got looking at an object I use very nearly first thing every day. Learning to use a camera has been great practice in looking at things differently.

The first thing is seeing light differently, appreciating the different qualities it has through the day. Next is thinking about what would make a good shot. Maybe the light makes it, and it would be just an ordinary shot even a few minutes later. Or maybe it's just a compelling subject by itself, or maybe you see it in a new way and you know how to create the conditions to shoot it so it's interesting. Then you think about what lens to put on the camera.

I took this object out to the patio while looking things over. It was only when I put it on the ledge that I realized what could be done. It actually took several tries to get that last shot. Then it was down to the basement for the macro lens, amazed at the colour and texture that was coming up.

Doesn't this look a little like a flower garden? These did not need a lot of pushing in Lightroom once the exposure was right.

Here's the object. The harsh morning light really fired up the reflections and colour. The big version of this really pops, but I'm not sure how well that shows up for you. And yes, that's a bit of a selfie. I didn't see that till I edited it.