Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift deals with matters of size and scale. I was always fascinated by one particular fact in this wonderful book: that Gulliver looked on the tiny Lilliputians as exquisite miniatures, perfect in every way, but when he arrived in Brobdingnag and found people over twenty metres tall, he found all kind of defects and ugliness when he looked at their skin.
Perception of beauty is linked to scale, something that we are all very aware of when we see a stunning photo on our mobile phone and then later view it on a large screen and find noise, unwanted blur, irrelevant little details, colour issues and so on, which gives us a very different perception of the image.
However, it is not quite so simple to say that small is always beautiful because it does not reveal the defects observable in the large: in macro photography it can be entirely the other way round. Macro enables us to look at objects so small that their structures do not reveal themselves to us at all without magnification. By magnifying them, they become beautiful to us and cease to be a mere blob. Thus through macro photography we can bring the extremely small to the level of the exquisite miniature: suddenly we can view the extraordinary structures of a fly or spider, reveal their magical inner workings, and we will be less likely to think of them as annoying little things which the world would be better without. Macro photography can thus be transformative in allowing us to develop a more healthy and real understanding of that whole part of the living world.
When I bought my first macro lens I found it totally fascinating to take photos of bugs and spiders and look at the images on my screen and see things that I was simply unable to see in real life. I never thought I would find a fly beautiful, but it certainly is, from the amazing structure of the eye to the delicate gossamer of the wings, and I was just happy not to be too critical as I took dozens of photos and then looked at them in wonder. I felt I had an opening into a whole new world which I’d never seen before but had always lived side by side with!
Of course, to continue with the Gulliver analogy, when you get into extreme macro, magnifying to x5 or more, you again begin to see the imperfections – the fly becomes a Brobdingnagian and measures have to be taken, and a brush and other kit need to be obtained to “clean up” the insect or flower, as we do not want to see unsightly blobs, dust and other imperfections in our image! The photographer Allan Walls is a leading expert on macro and has an article on this very subject
When I originally researched various macro lenses with a view to buying one, I knew I had done quite enough when YouTube’s algorithms decided that pretty much all my recommended videos were on macro kit. At some point in the process I came across a rather unusual lens made my Laowa: an extreme wide-angle macro. I really enjoyed the perspective that it gave, and I had an idea that seeing an insect or flower in context might in the end be more interesting that just having the object by itself against a background of (wonderfully, of course) creamy bokeh. I hadn’t decided to buy the lens at that point, but a couple of months later (when I was still looking!) I found what looked like almost the identical lens at half the price made by a company called Opteka; it was so cheap I snapped it up, and it became my new toy. Later I found what was probably the back story to this lens, that Opteka had indeed apparently ripped off Laowa’s design in every detail, and, not having had to do the research and design, could offer the lens at a knockdown price. Legal matters seemed to ensue, and suddenly the Opteka lens was nowhere to be purchased.
I am not sure if I am the first person to start my journey into macro with such an unusual lens; it’s quite hard to get used to – to get 1:1 maginification the object has virtually to be touching the lens, and you really have to be careful what else is in your picture, as it has a 120% angle of view. Technically the lens is hard to use, in addition to which getting close to insects and bugs can be a big challenge, so I would also very much like to get either the Tamron 90mm 1:1 or the Laowa 100mm 2:1, but plans to do this have had to be held back during the Covid 19 crisis.
As I sit at home and unable to get out, I’m even thinking of photographing bubbles, water drops and oil film, etc. just for the challenge. But photographing living things is what attracts me in macro photography.
As I have got used to the simple pleasure of seeing things big and with detail not visible to the naked eye, I have started to wonder more about what a good macro photograph is, and the matter of the small depth of field is never far from one’s mind. Of course, at ones desk at home, with lighting set up, electronic focusing rail and dedicated focus-stacking software, everything can be in focus with hitherto un-dreamed of magnification and sharpness. But this will mostly work with product photography, or with dead or otherwise inert creatures, but will rarely work out in nature, and that is what interests me. Really, you need one shot, with the focus on the eye, probably, or you need very many shots – what you don’t want is to have several “bands” of focus because you have overestimated the tiny depth of focus in macro.
Most of all, if I am to have any success, I want my photos to have character, or show something different in the way the insect is behaving or where it is; and this, I am realizing, is the hardest thing with this type of photography. I am thoroughly enjoying this first part of my journey to Lilliput!