sandipde

leaf eater

NIKON D5000

settings

Aperture f/16.0 ISO 1000 Shutter 1/200

upload_date

Oct, 2013

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522

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+116

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Behind The Lens

Location

This is a old photo from 2013 which was taken in our apartment garden when I was living in Bangalore, India. Those were the days when I started doing my macro photography works and as you can imagine there were abundance of subject in a tropical country like India. I used to spend hours chasing small insects hidden in the grass or under leaves. Every time I discovered something new !

Time

It was a sunday morning as far as I can remember. Around 8am to be precise ! The grass were still wet because of the last night's fog.

Lighting

Lighting is very important for macro work. You need to use very low aperture (high f number) so that max area of the subject stay in focus. you can not go to very iso to avoid noise and neither you can afford long shutter speeds as insects don't pose for you. So only solution is to introduce some lighting specially if the scene is dark like in this case of under the grass. But you need to carefully select the intensity of the flash so that you also get a balanced natural light ! I used a led ring light mounted in front of the camera.

Equipment

I used tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens mounted on Nikon D5000 body for this. The insect was too quick and although I carried my tripod, could not use it.

Inspiration

As I mentioned those were the days when I first got the taste of macro photography. It is whole different world. I got addicted to this new adventure of discovering living creatures through my lens and my friends and family were equally excited to see the intricate detail of these insects in the large screen. I also learned a lot about new species and their behaviors and how they contribute towards balancing the nature.

Editing

For this image there were not a lot of post processing involved. I did some noise reduction and sharpening and adjusted brightness, contrast and color a bit !

In my camera bag

It depends where I am going ! Normally now a days I always carry my fujifilm x100T every where I go. If I am going for a event or photoshoot I go with my 24-70 f/2.8 nikon lens with D610 body. 24-70 f/2.8 lens has become my main work horse for travel and event photography. Apart form that I carry tamron 80 mm for macro or portrait works. Tamron 150-600 mm if I am going to shoot wildlife. At present I also carry my DJI phantom 3 pro drone with me as I have started doing aerial photography !

Feedback

For macro photography of this kind the main requirement is patience ! You need to be extremely patient and careful. Little abrupt movement will scare them away. Spend time in that specific environment , get these inhabitant get used to you. They will come close to you eventually. Another important factor is the knowledge of their behavior. For example in the early morning they are generally less moving and jumping ..If you go at noon you will never able to make a shot like this. They will run away. For dragon flies it is easier in the late afternoon. they settle on some leaves for the night by then and you can shoot them for as long as you want ! Apart from these I am sure your readers are well aware about the technical aspects of these type of photography as there are a lot information available online !

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sandipde

sandipde

leaf eater

Behind The Lens

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