During last weekend I had to visit my in-laws house which is situated in foothills of Western Ghats bordering Karnataka and Kerala. I just carried my macro related equipments and thoroughly enjoyed the trip from photographic perspective. Mostly I spent couple of days photographying frogs, dew drops and other very small life forms. Most of the images I made during the trip are beyond life size using either 55mm extension tube (two pk-13s) on my Nikon 105mm f2.8 AF Micro lens or using 87 mm extension tubes (added 32mm Kenko on top of two PK-13s. It was just fun. But believe me, compositions are just not easy. With such magnifications we spend lots of time getting the basics of composition and dof right. At times it may be very frustrating.
Some more images from the trip are here. Enjoy !
As always, click on above images to see them in larger size (I hate the blogger's resizing algorithms which compromizes quality of the image posted).
- Ganesh H Shankar (Nature Lyrics)
5 comments:
Excellent collection Ganesh. Somehow i personally liked the frog eyes and also the spidey images a lot. Looking at the composition and also the equipment you have used ( multiple extension tubes ) - do you handhold it or stick the combo to tripod ?
I am not sure but the spidey image looks totally at ground level which i am guessing that you have shot it handheld.
Thanks for the beautiful images.
Shiv, thanks ! No, we just can hand hold them at such magnifications (may be D3 at 6400ISO might help!)In case of spider images fortunately the spider was at an elevation and I could use tripod to get an eye-level perspective. The same is true for those tiny plants with dew drops.
I second Shiv about spidey images. More than anything, the glint of sun and sun rays in the frog's eyes is just fantastic!
The Dew drop in the railing portraying the sun in such a small drop was a stunner! A tremendously HUGE object portrayed in such a minuscule drop - goodness gracious! Since yesterday I have been visiting that image and thinking about it, still not satisfied with the words that appear! Fantastic stuff!! Hats off!
As pramod had mentioned for me also the dew drop potraying the sun is the special one. The contol on exposure is amazing. Was it a pre visualized shot ganesh ? Would be nice to know how you approach handling dof and exposure for such scenarios ?
Mahesh, water drop image was not per-visualized one. When I saw the drop hanging I saw the sparkles from certain angle. Then I decided make an image of it. I made it just because of the sparkle. COming to exposure, backlit exposures are tricky. Normally I do necessary compensation while using camera's matrix meter. Incidently, Nikon' matrix meter works much better in baklit conditions. In macros DOF is a frustrating topic -:) Of late I try to look for compositions where in I can play with a very little dof (selective) - but this may not be always an ideal approach.
Shiv's my earlier comment should read "we just can't handhold.." sorry for the typo (not sure whether I can edit my comments).
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