Last week, I took some macro photos and videos at Pelican Island Wildlife Refuge in Florida, one of my favorite places in the world for close-up photography. In the video I filmed, I’ve explained in detail how to master lighting in macro photography.
Now that I live in Colorado, I’ve been doing much more landscape photography than macro, so it was wonderful to go back to the genre I started with. It turns out, as difficult as taking close-up photos can be, close-up video is even harder. Constantly maintaining focus and a good composition isn’t easy at all. Something to work on! Though I got pretty lucky with some of the shots in the video – lots of bug and lizard movement to be found last week.
Anyway, the full video is below! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback, either in the comments section on this article or below the video on Youtube:
Because I’m traveling off and on for the next month, I’m planning to publish next week’s video on Monday rather than Friday (and perhaps the same for the next few weeks).
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Thanks for watching!
Thomas Shahan has many useful youtube videos describing photography of live macro subjects.
The forums and galleries at www.photomacrography.net are chock full of images and examples of lenses and lighting gear for macro and supermacro imaging, both studio and in the field.
Thanks Spencer, it is a long time ago I experimented a little with macro but after your video I get mood to try it again. I think you are a very talented teacher!
Awesome, Cees, good luck with your macro photography! Glad you liked the video.
Thank you Spencer. I hardly shoot macro but I enjoyed the introduction to artificial lighting. I wish PL was interested in portraiture and the lighting of it (and in posting a nice video about it) :)
You are welcome, Fabrice! I’ve always been terrible at portraiture, so it’s not likely I’ll do a video on it soon. But I’m with you, it would be great to see some more articles on flash, posing, and so on. Maybe if we posted some good instructional articles about it, I’d be better at portraiture myself :)
I recommend Gavin Hoey both standalone and under his AdoramaTV linkage. Dozens of superb portrait flash training videos.
Thanks for the recommendation!
No problem. Gavin’s YouTube videos go back over a decade, and all of them are great, but if you have to choose a starting point, the Home Studio Essentials are good recent ones.