I am continuing to tinker with the Canon A720IS for wide angle macro, as it seems this will be the only machine I have for the purpose for he forseeable future….I now have a method of holding the camera and the slave flash, but would like to do some more tinkering before I lay it all out. Today I was up at Mt. Tolmie again, where I waited in vain for a glorious dawn…But I did see a spectacular moonset!
Click the image below for a larger version.
The subjects of my macro experiments were snakeflies and some Nomada cuckoo bees. These relatively inactive subjects proved ideal for my tinkering, and I managed a good many angles for each. If you have any thoughts on these compositions, please let me know….I was constrained a bit by ambient light, as it was near dawn, but in the future I want to let the landscape show through more.
Snakefly on dead camas. I kept the sky dark here, which is kind of a fashion cliche from a few years back, but I like the brooding atmosphere
This is kind of full ventral, but the light is not “believable”…
This is kind of cool, as the insect is descending…I do say that I “chose” these compositions, but with the shutter lag of the ancient compact, I get what I get!
This shot of a Nomada is pretty straightforward. I kept the sky and tree dark to keep the brooding atmosphere.
Here I have tried to get some background vegetation other than trees, but the grass actually resembles a tree!
This is a peeekaboo shot of the cute face of the bee.
The one shot I got that worked out of the cloud-obscured sun with the bee. I really like this one, even with the spittlebug below
Another view of the Nomada while sleeping.
OK, now for some comparisons, here are some shots of the same subjects with the 100 mm macro on the DSLR
Not as much interest in this background.
What I like about the 100 is how I can maneuver everything precisely o get a clean composition…That being said, maybe it is a bit stale.
This shows the stiffness of the sleeping bee’s posture
And in other news, check out this beautiful bee fly I found!
The tip of the abdomen is orange at certain angles
A cool fly from any point of view
And a bit wider to show more of the perch
Wonderful work. Lovely captures with that camera.
I think both styles have merit. When you show the photos alone, it’s great to have that background texture, mood, colour and context, but if you were going to use the photos in a text book or an information panel, sometimes the nice clean macro shots are better for that. Your photos are never stale, btw. My favorite is the horizontal composition of the stiff nomada bee with the wide angle macro. I keep being drawn back to it, the tension in the bee’s body is interesting and the colour relationships are lovely. It conveys a lot of information about the behavior of that insect. I also like that first photo of the fly–it’s very zen. And I like the delicate tracery of the grass.
Thanks for the feedback!