More macro

As you can gather from the last post, I have been out shooting macro again. Yesterday there were three of us on the trip and my truck was not going to be sufficient for the job unless we stuffed someone in the back, and that would be rather uncomfortable; not that I really cared because I was driving.

Then she who must be obeyed stepped forward and offered me the use of her transport, little realising the extremely rutted and muddy track I was going to take it down and, with luck, back again. Still, I was heartened by the immortal words of P.J. O’Rourke in his seminal piece “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink”:

“Mud, snow, water, woods – you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can’t always get it back – but that’s not your problem, is it? " Swap “rented” for “she who must be obeyed’s” and the problem was resolved. Her car would get us where we needed to go, we would worry later about getting it out of whatever hole I parked it in.

Our intrepid gang comprised Ian from PattayaDaze, neighbour Nik with his fancy OMD, and me. I would say the trip went well, apart from a spirited disagreement on American foreign policy on the way home, but no blood was spilled; which is more than you can say for the results of American foreign policy.

As usual, Ian spotted the bugs, we said “where?”, and a good time was had by all.

I am really warming to this macro lark. In many ways it is like photographing polo ponies. You take a shitload of shots, but it is not till you get home that you discover whether or not you have anything of worth. With polo ponies, success is measured by an interesting shot, preferably with all the legs off the ground; something the human eye is incapable of discerning. With macro it is all about nailing focus and producing a shot showing details that the unaided human eye is incapable of discerning.

The big difference between shooting polo ponies (or temples, or people on the street) and macro insects; is that for the big subjects you have a pretty good idea that they will be where you expect them to be when you go to shoot them. When you head out into the undergrowth you never know whether or not you will see anything worth photographing, or just end the afternoon with dirty feet, mosquito bites and a wife’s car stuck in a ditch.

Even you do spot something (or more likely, Ian spots it for you), the success rate using the camera hand-held for macro is very low. My success rate using the camera on a tripod is also very low, because the target subject rather unreasonably fucks off as soon as I start disturbing the undergrowth with tripod legs. So when some small creature stays still long enough for me to erect my tripod, get into position, obtain some sort of focus and get a shot, it feels like a minor triumph. And when I get home and find that some of the perceived minor triumphs are actually useable shots, well it makes it all worth while.

Yesterday I took 204 shots in two hours, of which twelve remain on my computer as deemed acceptable for retention. Here are some of them:

That last shot is not that good. But I have included it because the fly was so small. I mean really small. Imagine the smallest fly you have seen, half that and take away the fly you first thought of; and it’s even smaller than that. But it is awash with colour and festooned with spiky bits. God is great, evolution is extraordinary (strike out whichever does not suit your belief system).

A grand afternoon out, and well worth the explaining I had to do to she who must be obeyed regarding the condition, and location, of her car.

Comments 🔗

2012-12-17 | Grant says

Quite superb! Clearly you are on the way to becoming a macro god. Slightly disappointed at the absence of red ants, given your known affinity for the species…

2012-12-17 | biggrtiggr says

Fewer spiders please………. I’m afraid of spiders

2012-12-17 | Spike says

What, like that big hairy one sat behind you right now?

2012-12-17 | Robin Parmar says

The solution to the tripod or no tripod problem is this… a monopod. Useless much of the time, it comes into its own for macro, providing just enough support to make a difference. And you can rock back and forwards minutely while shooting bursts to maximise your chance of capturing focus.

2012-12-17 | Spike says

My tripod has a screw off leg which creates a monopod, and I did try that for a while. Tripod still won overall.

2012-12-17 | Wally says

Didn’t Rolf Harris have one of those ! Doesn’t a tripod become a bipod if you take one leg off !

2012-12-17 | Spike says

Indeed it does. And the other leg is the monopod.

2012-12-17 | Grant says

Hopefully that subject’s exhausted then…

2012-12-22 | sabot says

Just in case you don’t know, that P.J. O’Rourke piece you linked is hosted on the website of a notorious right-wing nutbag. You don’t seem to be that sort, so a heads -up. If you know and/or are, carry on then, I guess.

2012-12-22 | Grant says

Listen up sonny! Round here we don’t care if wings are right or left, long or short, clad in aluminium or doped linen as long as they keep us flying. Got it? PJ O’Rourke has stuck it to the American establishment big-time, and that has to be doing Dog’s work, in spades! Refer to Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully”, that’s how so much of the thinking world views the good ole’ Urinated States these days… Uncle Spike’s a faintly left of centre grown-up, a very well developed human being, he sure don’t need you trying to reset his moral compass. Hey guys, we just got a heads-up from a turkey at Christmas, how cool is that!

2012-12-22 | Spike says

Shush Grant! I chose this link because it was the first one I found on Google which had what I consider to be one of the best pieces of humourous writing ever crafted, and it saved me re-typing from my rather dog-eared copy of the book.

2012-12-22 | Grant says

Absolutely! I knew that something like that would be exactly the case. You have the unequivocal right to source your material from wherever or whoever you wish without attracting dumbass patronising comments from turkeys. PJ O’Rourke rules OK!

2012-12-29 | Jaroslava says

we were not asked to pay anything last August upon entxiig Laos through their international airport. It’s just a town not a city to describe. riding a bycicle would somehow capped the trip by the mekong river.