I took some photographs this afternoon using the macro setting on my digital camera. The macro still remains one of my favourite camera settings. I used a fairly high resolution so that when I downloaded/uploaded them to my computer, I was able to zoom in further and crop the shots with iPhoto. Can you guess what it is that I photographed?

Could this be a spider’s web, perhaps?

Or an alien from outer-space?

A tribal totem?

By the way, I’ve been experimenting with the new iPhoto on my computer. You can do so much with this version.

Have you guessed what the images are?

It’s a dragonfly! Sadly, the dragonfly was either injured or at the end of its life span. It was beautiful…

A dragonfly in macro

Click the images below to view the larger size.

Similar to a helicopter. I gave this one a colour-boost.

Here you can see the “alien from outer-space” on the shoulders, the upside down “tribal totem” at the base of the tail and the “spider’s web” wings.

It looks like the dragonfly wears a helmet.

My cats were quite enthralled to watch me take photos of this dragonfly.

Adding effects to your photos

Adding effects to photos with the new iPhoto is incredibly easy. I blurred the edges slightly in the photo directly above. To the other photos, I added a vignette (Edit photo -> Effects -> Vignette).

I find the vignette boosts the macro effect, drawing the eye towards the centre of the photo away from the corners.

The colour boost also emphasises the splashes of blue on the dragonfly’s body.

Shooting with a higher resolution

Taking detailed photos using a higher number of pixels gives you more room to play with and manipulate them during post-production.

I don’t know how common it is these days, what with the massive storage space available on memory cards, but it seemed to be common practice, for us amateur photographers, to change the digital camera settings to take lower resolution photos in order to get more onto a memory card. While this approach allows you to take masses of photos, it doesn’t give you a lot to work with at the other end. As I said, this is probably not much of an issue anymore.

If you are still using the lower resolution setting on your digital camera, try a higher setting and see the difference.

Related post:

• Using the zoom function in macro mode

Here are a couple more pics taken with the Voigtlander Vito BL.

A door in wall along a laneway in The Rocks area.

Argyle Street in The Rocks. I like this street corner with the modern skyscrapers shooting up behind the beautiful original buildings. Old and new together.

Learning to read the exposure meter

As predicted, it has taken a bit of practice to set the exposure correctly on the camera. The exposure meter has a striped indicator which I was mis-reading slightly and therefore setting the light scale ring about 1/2 a number higher than I should have been. (see previous post showing the striped light meter)

The next roll of film is black and white…