In honor of The International Year of the Periodic Table, the scientists behind the Beauty of Science project set out to capture the 11 chemical elements that make up 99% of your body in the most artistic way possible.
Want to get creative without leaving the comfort of your own home? Here's a 5-minute video by COOPH that contains 5 ideas for macro photographs you can do with a small budget, simple gear, and everyday items.
Want to improve your macro photography game? Here's a great 12-minute DPReview TV episode in which master macro shooter Don Komarechka demonstrates some simple techniques and setups you can use to capture better outdoor shots.
In this article, I'll be sharing 10 macro photography tips for beginners who are just starting out in the genre.
My name is Can Tunçer. I'm a photographer living in Turkey, and I have been shooting macro photographs for about 7 years now. As someone who likes to photograph the tiny details of nature, I recently chose the peacock feather as a subject and started a special project on it.
Last year, I bought a macro lens for the summer. Just a normal one with 1x magnification. I fell into a beautiful and mesmerizing world of minuscule flowers and bugs. I found that in macro photography, you don't have to travel to beautiful places to take beautiful photos -- you can just walk around in your backyard, and discover a whole new world.
Yesterday was a rainy, hazy day at home. I didn’t feel much like going anywhere but I needed to find something to do that didn’t involve sitting or work. I decided to break out one of my macro lenses and a flash with soft box diffuser to go macro hunting around the house.
Last year, Olympus Singapore loaned me a pre-launch unit of their new STF-8 Macro Twin Flash, together with their OM-D E-M1 and M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro for a test-run in the field. I've had the set for about a week -- it was easy to use and the results were pretty good, although it took some time for me to get used to focusing using the LCD.
Remember that crazy macro 'relay' lens Venus Optics showed off at Photokina? The Laowa 24mm f/14 Relay lens looks more like a rifle barrel than a camera lens, and now we finally get to see what it can do.
The Beauty of Science project bid farewell to 2016 in an appropriately beautiful way. Using old footage and outtakes from their previous experiments, they illustrated all four Earthly seasons in a gorgeous end-of-year video that'll have you itching to break out that macro lens.
Macro photography on the cheap usually involves reverse lensing or buying some affordable extension tubes for your kit. But what if there was an extreme macro lens out there that was also extremely affordable? Enter the ZY Optics 20mm f/2 4.5x Super Macro Lens.
The Beauty of Science project stumbled across something awesome this week when they dropped different color M&Ms into a petri dish of water and watched them dissolve. You'd never guess it, but the colorful "show" these dissolving candies put on is absolutely captivating.
One of the most affordable ways to dabble in macro photography is reverse lensing. But while this typically means buying an adapter, it looks like Canon is considering building that second front-facing mount onto some of their lenses in the future, creating two lenses in one.
With travel photography, one of the issues is prioritizing equipment. You simply can’t carry everything you could possibly want to bring; if you do, it often hampers the overall travel experience as you’re weighed down by equipment and have to constantly look after it.
Serbian photographer Dusan Stojancevic has figured out a great way to make his photos of iconic landmarks stand out. Instead of pointing his camera directly at them, he captures the landmarks reflected in water droplets.
In the Autumn of 2015, I decided to try and capture the beauty of autumn leaves in a different way. My idea was to highlight the leaves from beneath to emphasize the lines and the color of decaying parts.
Photographer Neal Grundy knows how to mix multiple elements to create stunning abstract work, and his recent personal project titled simply Flowers and Paint is just that. By mixing two still life staples together, he creates something eerily beautiful.
Venus Optics are quickly becoming a leader in extreme lens design, but even by their standard, they've seriously outdone themselves with the Laowa 24mm f/14 Replay 2x Macro lens.
The mesmerizing macro dance above was created by video artist Thomas Blanchard (previously featured here) using only paint, oil, oat milk, paint thinner, bleach, and soap liquid. And it's spectacular.
Capturing beautiful macro photos on the cheap isn't tough if you're willing to experiment a little bit. Amateur photographer Benjamin Weir was able to do it with just a smartphone and a lens element he tore out of a dead point-and-shoot camera.
Amazing photography subjects are everywhere, and if you don't believe us, look no further than this gorgeous macro photography timelapse of pain killers, vitamins, and other over-the-counter pills dissolving in water.
Fine Art photographer Pascal Goet has been capturing macro photos for 26 years, but it's only today that his work made its way onto our radar. His series Mask & Totem features some of the most colorful, anthropomorphic insects he's photographed—insects that looks like mysterious, intricate masks.
Felix Hernandez's photographs are other-worldly. Using intricate miniatures and macro photography techniques, he takes his dreams and translates them into reality through the camera. His latest project, The Wardrobe, is no exception.
It's safe to say natural history photographer Clay Bolt is obsessed with North American bees. What began with a few photos in his backyard in South Carolina back in 2014 has turned into a full blown project aimed at helping document the staggering diversity of North American bees.
A few weeks ago, I traveled to the Central Valley of Costa Rica for a professional development opportunity through work. While my week in Central America was focused on improving leadership skills and cultural intelligence, I was stoked for the little free time I had for dedicated bug photography.
Levon Biss's exhibit Microscuplture is one of the most entrancing macro photography projects we've run across. A "unique visual experience," the series and exhibition is made up of unimaginably detailed macro photographs of insects captured using a microscope lens.
In this article I will describe how to construct a simple reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) setup using an Arduino microprocessor and a 3D printer.
There’s nothing like a spot of macro photography for making you stop to appreciate nature’s tinier gems.
When you think "towering architecture photography," the only chewing gum on your mind is probably the piece you might step on while trying to frame your shot from the sidewalk. But Sam Kaplan's architectural homage Unwrapped is actually made of gum.
Amateur photographer Carola Becker spent last Autumn photographing hundreds of leaves as they turned from green, to gold, to red, to brown. The resulting macro images, placed side by side, show "the beauty of diversity and imperfection."
When it comes to macro photography, DIY solutions for would-be macro shooters looking to get better results without emptying their wallets abound—from reverse lensing, to DIY macro tubes, to full-blown light boxes. Today, we'll add to that list by showing you how to make a simple DIY flash diffuser.
Finnish fine art photographer Joni Niemelä loves capturing and sharing little details in nature that often get unnoticed. One of his recent subjects has been the Drosera, also known as sundews, which are among the largest of all carnivorous plants.
The plants are covered with drops of dew-like liquid that are used to lure, capture, and digest insects that happen to wander by, and Niemelä decided to make these beautiful structures the subject of two recent projects, titled Otherworldly Blues and Drosera.
If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to achieve high magnification in your photography, you need to know about the reverse lens macro photography technique. Reverse lens macro photography has allowed me to achieve the magnification I couldn’t come close to with my more expensive equipment.
Just months after announcing a 60mm f/2.8 macro lens that has gotten glowing reviews, Chinese gear manufacturer is back with a new product called the KX800. It's a flexible twin light for macro photography that boasts the world's highest guide number.
Sony might be stealing the show with the announcement of the a7II today, but one other camera company released some gear today too. They're a little Japanese outfit you might have heard of called Fujifilm, and today they unveiled two new X-Series macro extension tubes and the release date for the huge X-T1 firmware 3.0 update.
Italian photographer Alberto Ghizzi Panizza has spent the past ten years perfecting his particular brand of macro photography. Specifically, Panizza has nailed down the niche of capturing macro photographs of flowers as refracted in minuscule drops of dew, oftentimes on insects.
Macro photography is a wonderful tool for scientists and researchers, but the complex nature of capturing detailed, focus-stacked macro images of everything from insects to the human tongue puts the tool out of reach of many.
The Macropod photographic system solves this by making the entire process both portable and automatic, and producing some of the sharpest, most striking macro photographs we've ever seen.
What you see above is one of the most unusual pieces of lighting gear we’ve ever chanced across. Looking a bit like a prop from the upcoming Star Wars film, this contraption is actually a macro flash adapter designed by Polish photographers Agnieszka and Ernest Lysak.
Hand-held macro photography presents a lot of challenges, but three of the most prevalent are: subject movement, camera shake, and harsh shadows. Fortunately, you don't have to carry around a bunch of gear to solve these issues. In fact, a cheap plastic cup will do the trick all by itself!
Photographer Suren Manvelyan is back with more of the types of images that he's made his name capturing. Namely: intense macro photographs of the strange shapes and landscapes found in animals' eyes.
In 2011 we shared part one, in 2013 part two, and now we get to share part three: a fishy exploration into the eyes of animals that spend much or all of their time underwater... and an owlet.