Yellow Lunch
Macro No. 02 - a tiny yellow wasp having its lunch on our balcony :)
Macro No. 02 - a tiny yellow wasp having its lunch on our balcony :)
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Mar, 2016Views
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TheNextCrossing
February 14, 2017
Thanks a lot, and even more for the clarification :) quite a camouflage!
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken on our balcony. We have a lot of flowers there - a great way to attract many insects and other tiny critters and practice one's macro technique...Time
The shot was taken in the early June afternoon, when the sunlight hits our balcony at just the right angle, bathing everything in bright light, so the background is also nicely lit...Lighting
I always find that combination of bright sunlight and an LED ringlight works great for insects, tiny flowers, etc., since it allows for a nice falloff between the subject and the background - many macro shots, done only with a flash tend to have a very hard separation between the foreground and background (it is sometimes necessary, mind you, but in most nature shots, I prefer it this way)...Equipment
Olympus E-M1, Olympus M.60mm F2.8 macro, no-name LED ringlight...Inspiration
The particular colour of the tiny flowers was perfectly complimented by the yellow of the wasp - the entire combination just screamed "summer" at me, so I could not resist...Editing
I tend to play with photographs until I get the desired image - it is always more about interpretation rather than bland registration in my case (one of the things that really sank in at the Art Academy). However, having said that, I always do my utmost to keep the image realistic - although I do lots of HDR, for example, I spend plenty of time making sure they do not have that dreaded "HDR look", but approximate my impression of the place in the most natural manner...In my camera bag
I embraced miniaturisation and went smaller and smaller as the years went by, so my extensive 645 Mamiya kit was replaced by Canon 5D and L lenses in their various iterations, only for them to be absolutely successfully supplanted by a m43 kit, which, I must say, reignited my love for photography big time. So, my kit now comprises of Olympus E-M1 and a number of Olympus lenses - 7-14 F2.8, 40-150 F2.8, 60 F2.8 macro, and pretty much all their fast primes... getting ready to purchase 300 F4 and 12-100 F4 as well... I also carry a Sirui aluminium tripod (an amazing, unbeatable value for money), timelapse controller (Radian), spare body (Olympus E-PL7)... I also have a Panasonic GH4, for video work, but it does not see much photography action - I somehow just feel more "at home" with the Olympus equipment for photo work...Feedback
In this particular case, patience is truly a virtue - with an extremely shallow depth of field and the insects not really caring a lot about your needs as a photographer, it pays to be patient, but also to try and anticipate what they might do next. Also, try and be as perpendicular to the desired plane of focus as possible - here, I was trying to align the lens to the plane of the wasp's head, body and wings, letting its tail get progressively out of focus - the easier way is to go full-on perpendicular and be rich above the insect, but those photos tend to be rather flat an not dynamic at all...
