How Macro Photography Changed My Life

by Terri

How, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. My photography journey has run the gamut from snapshots of my kids while they were growing up to travel photography.  But the kids are grown and I can’t travel enough to feed my hunger for being behind the camera.

Back all those years ago in Tracey Clark’s Picture classes, she introduced me to macro photography and the magic that could be created with a little 50mm Canon Compact Macro lens. 

Macro subjects are everywhere. You can find them at the grocery store, at local parks, in your own backyard and even inside your home. You don’t need a whole arsenal of lenses either. I got by with that little compact macro for quite some time and finally invested in the 100mm Canon Macro lens that I use now. In fact, it’s rarely off my camera.

Not only did focusing on macro photography give me an endless supply of things to photograph, I learned to see and appreciate all the tiny details of the world around me. Ordinary objects become extraordinary when viewed through a macro lens. Things that I might have walked right by before now hold a fascination and wonder as I focus in on all the tiny parts of nature.

And even if you’re not shooting the kind of close-up macros necessary to capture flower stamens, bugs and snowflakes, most macro lenses provide wide enough apertures to create that separation of your subject from the background that makes what you are focusing on the star of the show.

As you can tell from my photos, my subject of choice most of the time is flowers (with an insect or two thrown in). But there are so many other things you could choose to focus on: food, butterflies, and other growing things. The choice of subject matter is literally endless. If you're interested, you can check out this article which gives 15 macro photography subjects to try.

 

So I started out this post by saying macro photography changed my life. I know that’s a pretty strong statement but at the very least it has made me fall in love with photography all over again. I can walk out my door and around my yard and find any one of a number of things to get up close and personal with. It has made me appreciate all the little details of the world around me. And for that, I am eternally grateful.