Insect Macro Photography For Macro lover's

Insect - Macro photography

The lighting was the most important element of the scene. I like to create a natural looking light source in my images and this is usually achieved using a small softbox attached to the off-camera flash unit. The flash was set to manual so I could adjust the output – my starting point is normally ¼ power.

I’ve photographed these little crickets before using diffused flash and found that because their skin is a little reflective, you always get that white reflection running down the back. A trick I use is polarisation. I attach polarising film to the front of the flash head using sticky Velcro strips and then place a polarising filter on the lens. It’s a technique called crossed polarisation and manages to cut out the reflections and annoying highlights.

In this case, I actually used two flashguns: one screwed to a small extendable pole that I was able to push into the ground and another was placed on a large flower pot next to the poppies. I then used a Canon transmitter on the camera to control the flash guns.

Sometimes you really have to plan ahead, think fast, and decide quickly which things to move in the foreground and background. Here, I wanted the cricket against the orange poppy as the colours of both worked well together. I pushed down the front two petals, exposing the stamen inside. I then managed to gently move the tiny cricket with a fine soft paintbrush onto a leaf and place it next to the poppy.

Thankfully, it walked into the poppy and onto the stamen without jumping away. I then slowly moved the camera back and forth for the crucial focusing (no focusing ring on the MPE), held my breath and gently pressed the shutter. I think it took maybe three or four shots before it jumped away. After some slight cropping and processing in Lightroom, I got my shot that I had roughly imagined.