I was given a wonderful gift this Christmas. I hadn't asked for it and wasn't expecting it, so it made the gift all that more special. It was a macro lens and the first thing I did was go home and attach it to my camera. I knew that this lens was designed to photograph small things at a very close range, so my initial subjects were all little. Being that I am a person who loves little knick-knacks and doo-dads, I didn't have any difficulty finding subjects! It was fun to see how big the lens made these little things look.
Eventually the "small made big" format started to become redundant and it finally occurred to me that this was not the only thing the macro lens could do. I became adventurous taking pictures of pieces of things and tiny portions of even larger subject matter. The results amazed me. Pages of a book became silvery thin icicles, the veins of a leaf a roadmap, lace an intricate web of loops and circles. One day, when the weather was still favorable, I ventured outside to see what the woodpile might offer. Perhaps there was some piece of wood with textured bark, or the weights we used to keep it covered might have some rust. As I walked along inspecting the pile my eye landed on some fungi we call "Turkey Tails". Summer long past, the plant was dead but still attached firmly to its formerly living host. Since it could no longer find sustenance from the tree, the Turkey Tail had shriveled up. "Interesting," I thought, "It'll make a great black and white." So I took some pictures from several different viewpoints but didn't think much about what the final result would really look like.
Later that evening, after the dishes were washed and the laundry folded I loaded the pictures into the computer. I was delighted by what I discovered. Suddenly a world I had barely acknowledged existed was there in all its glorious detail right before my eyes. The Turkey Tails which had looked shriveled and dead to my naked eye was now a ruffled piece of art. And just as I'd expected, it made a great black and white.
We tend to go through life in a familiar routine or pattern. We get used to seeing things in a similar way. Because these aspects of our lives are "pre-set", we're surprised when they change. A friend gets a new haircut, a store moves its inventory around, or something is left out of place and we stumble upon it in the dark and it jolts us out of the "usual". We become accustomed to following this route because it helps our sometimes chaotic lives appear more steady. It's not necessarily a bad thing if our lives go this way, but it does keep us from recognizing that there is so much more to see and sometimes those things are not visible to the naked eye.
Seeing in the macro world involves pointing the lens of our eyes toward the minute details. It involves expecting to see the unexpected although we may need a little assistance to do so. But there are great rewards for looking at the world through a macro lens and I've only just begun to do so.
Eventually the "small made big" format started to become redundant and it finally occurred to me that this was not the only thing the macro lens could do. I became adventurous taking pictures of pieces of things and tiny portions of even larger subject matter. The results amazed me. Pages of a book became silvery thin icicles, the veins of a leaf a roadmap, lace an intricate web of loops and circles. One day, when the weather was still favorable, I ventured outside to see what the woodpile might offer. Perhaps there was some piece of wood with textured bark, or the weights we used to keep it covered might have some rust. As I walked along inspecting the pile my eye landed on some fungi we call "Turkey Tails". Summer long past, the plant was dead but still attached firmly to its formerly living host. Since it could no longer find sustenance from the tree, the Turkey Tail had shriveled up. "Interesting," I thought, "It'll make a great black and white." So I took some pictures from several different viewpoints but didn't think much about what the final result would really look like.
Later that evening, after the dishes were washed and the laundry folded I loaded the pictures into the computer. I was delighted by what I discovered. Suddenly a world I had barely acknowledged existed was there in all its glorious detail right before my eyes. The Turkey Tails which had looked shriveled and dead to my naked eye was now a ruffled piece of art. And just as I'd expected, it made a great black and white.
We tend to go through life in a familiar routine or pattern. We get used to seeing things in a similar way. Because these aspects of our lives are "pre-set", we're surprised when they change. A friend gets a new haircut, a store moves its inventory around, or something is left out of place and we stumble upon it in the dark and it jolts us out of the "usual". We become accustomed to following this route because it helps our sometimes chaotic lives appear more steady. It's not necessarily a bad thing if our lives go this way, but it does keep us from recognizing that there is so much more to see and sometimes those things are not visible to the naked eye.
Seeing in the macro world involves pointing the lens of our eyes toward the minute details. It involves expecting to see the unexpected although we may need a little assistance to do so. But there are great rewards for looking at the world through a macro lens and I've only just begun to do so.
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