I had thought about heading out today to see about finding a place to try some winter wildlife photography - particularly looking for deer in the snow. However, it was just far too cold try do that, so I thought about what I could shoot around here.

I still headed out into the cold, but this time with the MP-E 65mm to see whether I could get any super macro shots of some snowflakes. I'd seen something somewhere (I can't remember where) of photos of individual snowflakes, so I figured I would see if I could do the same.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1, 10, 3.2 sec respectively at f/16. ISO 400. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

First - finding individual snowflakes is much more difficult than you would think. Any time I would try and look where there was any noticeable amount of snow, it was nearly impossible to distinguish individual flakes. I ended up figuring out that I could find some on the windows of Anya's truck. Even there, I only managed to find maybe half a dozen at a time. And if that wasn't enough of a challenge, I could literally watch the flakes melt in front of me once I did find them.

When I started, I was using my MT-24EX dual macro flash, but I found it was causing far too much in terms of reflections, so I turned it off and went to long exposure times. As you can see, the longest of which went all the way up to 10 seconds.

All of these shots were done at 5x magnification, so dealing with focus was extremely challenging. Anya bought me a macro focusing rail for my birthday, which greatly helped, but at 5x magnification, the slightest movement makes a huge difference in the focus.

This is definitely another subject I'll have to try again in the future - it is just so cool to see such an intricate and unique subject at such magnifications.

- Bill

For this shot, I asked my lovely assistant to position my flash behind the orchid to produce a different view and get those nice highlights along the edges of the petals...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/22. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

This year, I started a "Project 52" to keep myself motivated to take photos on a regular basis. I've already hit some rough times getting good ideas of things to shoot, but last week I came up with the idea to shoot a blue jay feather with my new super-macro lens - the Canon MP-E 65mm.

The results were not nearly as good as I wanted, and I almost dumped the whole lot of them. Instead, I kept them and I will use them in the future to refer back to in order to correct the mistakes I made.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, bottom-left with Kenko Teleplus PRO 300 "DG" AF 2x Teleconverter, top-left with Canon Speedlite 580EX II, others with Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. Assorted exposures. ISO 100.

The shot in the bottom-left is actually a 10x magnification as I had my 2x teleconverter combined with the MP-E 65 set to 5x magnification. The clarity on it isn't as good as I would have liked, so I'm sure I will be retrying that at some point as it certainly is an interesting shot.

- Bill

I'm getting anxious to get back in the water... I wouldn't even mind taking photos of more fireworms...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

There you can even see a little of the variety of colors with the white and green ones...

- Bill

Yes - this little snail is actually called a Flaming Tongue (Cyphoma gibbosum).

We saw plenty of these little snails on a lot of the dives on this trip, and while they certainly weren't moving much, they were difficult to photograph.

One challenge was because of their diet, which consists of the polyps of soft corals. The soft corals are often branching off in many directions (much like a small bush with no leaves) and thus getting a good angle to shoot through those branches was not always easy.

Exposure always seemed to be difficult too - here you can see I ended up with some weird shadows and a still somewhat darkened shot. I'm not sure if it was the soft corals or the mantles of the Flamingo Tongues that caused the problem, but I definitely struggled getting a good clean exposure.

Regardless, they certainly are interesting little critters. While they are snails, the colorful pattern you see is not the shell which is actually white (or off-white) with no pattern - it is actually the mantle of the snail wrapping up and over the top of the shell. It can be retracted back into the shell, and for whatever reason, Mike (our dive master) always seemed to find the retracted ones while we always found the regular ones.

Also visible in this shot is the damage these snails cause as they eat the polyps on the coral - leaving whitish scar tissue. The polyps do grow back, so the damage is not permanent.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 200. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

- Bill

Another visit back to that set of photos I took with my father-in-law's resin sculpture robots...

Like the first photo I shared of this set, I really like how the lighting and the perspective sets the scene. Again, the way the flash light fell on the scene, it produced that dark shadow inside the archway - which definitely adds a layer of depth and mystery to the scene. On top of that, the way 35mm macro lens provides magnification while keeping a wider view of the scene really produces a perspective that allows the viewer to get lost in the scene without feeling that it is miniaturized. Additionally, having the robot looking out of the scene to the left allows the viewer to explore the shot without getting stuck in only one spot (and adds to the feel of the scene in my opinion).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Tokina AT-X M35 Pro DX AF 35mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1, 1/100 sec respectively at f/8. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

I still need to get some more shots with this subject - perhaps in the snow would work....

- Bill

Here's a couple more of those faux smoke shots...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/22. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing and edits in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original)

- Bill

If you've been following along (or checked the equipment list), you might have noticed that I now own four different macro lenses. You might also wonder why one would need that many different specialty lenses.

The answer is that each one provides a different focal length (35mm, 65mm, 100mm, and 180mm). While each one provides a different working distance to the subject, that causes different perspective, and also a different field of view. The field of view is basically the amount of the scene that is in the frame. Perspective can be thought of as the relationship of foreground elements to background elements.

	35mm
	100mm

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Tokina AT-X M35 Pro DX AF 35mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM respectively, 1/30 and 1/80 sec respectively at f/2.8. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw

In this case, I kept my foreground subject almost identical in the frame, but if you look at the background, you can definitely tell a huge difference. Here, I used a wide aperture to get a shallow depth of field, so the background is pretty well blurred and full of soft bokeh.

However, if you look at the shapes of the background, you can definitely identify a couple major differences. First, the 100mm shot has a much less cluttered background because it has a much smaller field of view. Additionally, the perspective causes the background elements to appear much larger in the frame (and thus making them seem closer).

- Bill

Ok - I think we'll stick with the abstract stuff today.

A while back, I saw this video from Adorama:

I decided to keep things a bit simpler than Mark did. My setup (which I forgot to take a photo of) consisted of just a clear drinking glass inside our light tent with a single strobe. I used my 100mm macro lens to allow me to move in close enough to eliminate the edges of the glass.

What do you think of the results?

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/22. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing and edits in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original)

This one reminds me of an abstract painting of some bonsai. Regardless of what you see, I think the technique is pretty fun, and I'm sure I'll try it some more in the future.

- Bill.

One of the things that happen when you start working with macro photography is that you often lose perspective and cross over into a realm of abstract. Magnifying things we don't normally see, and some that we can't even see with the naked eye can certainly put someone in an unfamiliar, alien world.

To me, at least, that is part of the fun...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Obviously, this is a very close-up shot of an orchid. The way the light from the flash and the intentional "over"-exposure produce an unworldly realm - almost like some glowing cave to my eyes - really seems to draw me into this photo.

- Bill