Macro Photography: Zero to Sixty

Macro photography is the photography of the very small and the very close up. It is a relaxing and fun genre of photography and it takes very little skills, equipment, or prior experience to get started. We will cover the equipment, the exposure skills, the focusing skills, and the editing skills used to create macro imagery. We begin by understanding magnification and the macro ration. From there we move into understanding macro lenses, what makes them different from other lenses, how they work, and what kinds of magnifications they produce. From there we will examine how to build a proper exposure of up close subject matter. Focusing can prove difficult in macro environments because of the inherent shallow depth of field, so we will learn focusing skills. Once we have these essentials techniques under our belts we will add flash to the equation and learn how to use a flash to add drama to an image. Next we move into editing considerations. First we will shoot and merge a focus stack series. These are series of images, shot at different focusing distances, and merged together to create a single photograph with a longer depth of field. Last we will examine the basic goals of photo editing that we use independent of the editing software you use.