Category: Macro Challenges

Never had I fallen more in love with macro photography than when I stumbled upon the opportunity to photograph spiders. It opened up a whole new world. It was like wearing my glasses for the first time; tiny detail that my eyes would never see were brought to live on my camera screen; faces emerged from webs; spiders seemingly embarrassed at the scrutiny covered their eyes with their legs; amazing colours emerged; giggling faces were revealed. It was love at first sight.

On the down side, a whole new aspect of spider behaviour was revealed to me. I spent hours watching them capture prey, bind them in their silky web and suck them dry. On several occasions I felt queasy with the sights that were unfolding in my viewfinder. Yet so hooked was I with this new emerging world that I almost ruined the LCD screen on the camera by overheating it with the amount of shots taken and reviewed in 33degree heat.

I sat hour after hour in the baking sun, eyes glued to the bushes, rocks and undergrowth for spiders. I’d dehydrate, lose a little of my mind and develop a deep obsession with spiders all by spending one afternoon with these amazing creatures.

They’re not easy to capture – the slightest breeze throws the web into chaos and renders sharp images impossible (mental note made to myself to buy a windbreaker!). They would also have a habit of remaining dead still until the wind broke, when they would scurry around their web and come forward for a better look at me – rendering my focal distance null and void and throwing me and my tripod into chaos. I won’t lie, on several occasions they’ve also lunged from their web toward the camera and I’ve screamed and fallen back into the undergrowth before scurrying into the safety of the gite, covered from head to toe in goosebumps. It’s not that I am scared of spiders (I grew up with a spider’s nest in the corner of my bedroom and refused any offer of its removal – even after watching arachnophobia!), but once their sinister little world has been opened up to you, well….lets say I developed a healthy respect for them and will not be providing them with any opportunities to suck my blood!

Here’s a couple of my favourite spider photographs (above and below), more are available in our online macro gallery.

Here goes:

• One month
• At least one publishable (5*) shot to be taken every day for 31 consecutive days
• A minimum of 2.5 hours spent on photography, post production / photo promotion and blogging each evening (Mon to Fri inclusive) – much longer at the weekends
• Total average hours spent on the challenge in the last month 77.5
• Minimum shots taken in a session 31
• Maximum shots taken in one session 1,700 (!)
• Average memory cards filled when shooting insects: 1.5
• Number of blogs: 33
• No. of facebook likes for TarajiBlue 30 (we need your help here!)
• Images uploaded to the TarajiBlue macro gallery: 106
• Images uploaded to Flickr; 102
• Number of images uploaded to 500 px, 11
• Total days off from photography 2 (one because we had guests to stay and another through exhaustion!)
• Number of PC drives filled to the brim with shots taken: 2
• Number of times I try to claim my husband’s 7D as my own: at least once daily 🙂
• Number of guest contributions to the macro gallery: 3 (Thanks Ali!)
• Approximate number of times Bibble5 has crashed on me when processing the photos: 20
• Number of hits to the Tarajiblue website in July 14,000 – more than 4 times the usual!
• No of visitors to the Tarajiblue website was 1,999 (eeek – one more and we’d have made the magic 2,000!)
• Number of memorable and crazy feats attempted: 3 (climbing on our roof, creating a dark room in my toilet and fearing arrest on a building site).
• Social networks deployed daily to share the images taken: 4 (facebook, twitter, flickr and google+)

Number of days needed to recover..??!!

 

Day 31 of the macro challenge and the end is here! What a fabulous month it has been. I feel almost weepy to see the end of it, I’ve loved the motivation and energy it’s provided me with – and I’ve loved having such great friends to support me daily and follow my progress. Thanks everyone – I could not have kept up the energy and focus if it wasn’t for you.

So – should I carry on???!!! …..

Well, I need at least an evening or two off because I am EXHAUSTED! But I am tempted, because this time tomorrow night I will not have a clue what to do with my time from now on 😉 What will I dream about and occupy all my spare thoughts with once there is no macro photography? I’ve enjoyed it so much it’s actually prevented me from taking time out to book our next holiday – now that’s saying something!

What I have especially loved about the macro challenge is that it has really opened my eyes to new styles of photography – I’ll be posting a blog in the coming days about the lessons I have learnt and why I have benefited from the experience so much, but suffice to say I have loved the fact that it has opened my eyes to another miniature, more detailed and extremely interesting world that we often overlook in our daily lives. Put it this way – I no longer just class myself as an amateur wildlife photographer!

So – the time has come for the final reveal……can I top last night’s photography? Well, I almost took drastic measures tonight – I felt ‘Pets at Home’ calling me to buy some crickets to photograph, but then I pictured my husband’s face as he arrived home to find the living room covered in crickets and thought otherwise 🙂

I did, however, decide to stick with the insect theme having been so successful with it previously – so off on the ‘hunt’ I went. I decided not to make life too easy for myself tonight, so I chose to focus on green flies. They are so tiny, intricate and beautiful and their true detail is often very difficult to capture with human eyes alone.  I must confess that I had tried to take photos of them a few weeks back but I was very unsuccessful, I hoped I’d have better luck tonight.

One of my favourite shots from tonight is provided above – it’s not as grand as last night’s bluebottle fly shots  but I am happy with it non-the-less. It’s a glimpse into a tiny world and highlights detail that the eye alone would never capture. In the macro online gallery I have also uploaded another version of this shot in black and white  just to experiment a little on my last night 😉

And here’s another image from tonight’s session (below) – just to whet your taste buds for one last look at my online macro gallery where other shots from tonight are stored 🙂

That’s all from me folks…over and out (sob!).