Closeups in Harsh LightOften I find myself shooting in less than ideal conditions and if I waited for perfect weather or light I’d rarely get a chance to shoot, so one of the things that I wanted to teach myself was how to photograph insects using a mix of natural light and flash. Since portrait photographers often under expose the ambient light in a scene and then use a flash to expose the subject I thought that would be a good place to start. After reading several examples at Strobist (a site that you should all be reading as well) I set out to play. This is what I’ve learned so far…The trick is to keep the sun at an angle that's either to the si
Sunny 16 Rule for MacroSometimes I like a black background because it helps to isolate the subject -very handy in situations where the background might ruin the shot because there’s just too much going on. But what about those situations where you want to show the subject in its natural environment? When shooting close-ups it’s easy: Just set you camera to shutter or aperture priority and use a little flash for fill (about -1 1/3 to -2 FEC). The range of exposures will be limited by the amount of natural light and the ISO you want to use, but you’ll get even lighting throughout the frame.But what if you don’t want to be limited by the availabl
Shooting Dragonflies TutorialI’ve spent a lot of time at Lago deAverno (Lake of Averno) shooting dragonflies. There are several species of them but the most common is the Violet Darter in the photo. After a while you start to pick up on their habits and quirks, and you learn when you can get close and when you're wasting your time. The trick is to find one that's busy. If they are feeding, mating, or otherwise occupied then they are less likely to fly away. If they do fly off then just freeze -if the dragon comes back to the same spot (or close to it) then try again. If the critter lands several meters away from you then look for a new subject to shoot.If you try
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