I think I was one of the few people who was genuinely excited to see the rain this Bank Holiday weekend. Whilst marooned in the middle of a Scottish field, the spring rains provided the perfect opportunity for me to indulge my love of macro photography. I was equipped with my new macro extension rings (a Christmas gift) and was eager to give them a trial run.
I started on the Saturday with the 25mm extension ring on my Canon ES 100mm lens and was astonished at how close I could get to ‘the action’. Hand-holding the camera in the blustery winds proved to be a challenge, but in half an hour or so I’d become accustomed to the equipment and the weather, and had started to produce some good results. I spent most of my time with my bottom pointing skywards, rain dripping down my trousers, as I took to the undergrowth in search of raindrops on grass stems and weeds. I fell in love with what I saw. The extension rings enabled me to get so close to the plants that three or four raindrops would fill my eyepiece and I’d begin to notice fine hairs on weeds, individual patterns on a single blade of grass and see colours and landscapes reflected in the tiniest of waterdroplets. The picture above was one of the first I took and it is pretty much straight out of the camera – no editing and crucially no cropping.
I especially like the image below because I love how an ‘ordinary’ weeds has been transformed to look like a Venus fly trap preying on the single and vulnerable raindrop.
I’ll think twice before I weed our garden next time!
Additional macro photographs taken this weekend have been added to the Taraji Blue macro challenge photo gallery. I hope you like them and I welcome any comments and feedback.
