Tag Archives: macro

Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple, Oil and Water

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Oil and Water in Purple and Yellow

This is for the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge of Purple. I hate posting the same old thing, and trying to find unique and creative ways to do things is just one thing I love about photography. The photo above happens to also serve as my Project 365 photo for Day 243, getting closer and closer to that 300 day mark. If you are wondering how I did this, great, because it’s not that hard, but does take some patience and a bit of prep work. Every time I do this kind of photography it always turns out different, which makes it a unique technique to try.

The image above, and the other below, are simply a mixing of ordinary cooking oil, and tap water, placed together in a glass cooking bowl or cake pan. Making the colors is the fun part, you can be creative here, use food coloring, fabrics, a colored bowl, or like I did here, just different colors of copy paper. Here I used two yellow and two purple pieces of paper off-set with each other where they all came together in the center. That is how you get that the bubbles with a mix of different colors. To use paper, you just place is under a clear glass bowl, to use food coloring, just place a white piece of paper under a clear bowl.

The hard part is getting the focus to work because there are several different focal points, like the bottom of the bowl, the water, the bubbles, and paper under the bowl and so on. In this case, I used a Nikon D7000 camera body, a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens, mounted on a Nikon PK-13 (27.5mm) extension tube (extension tubes are really cheap if you have a DSLR). Using an extension tube is a way to do macro photography without having to buy an expensive macro lens. If you try to use an extension tube, just keep in mind the lens will have no aperture value, especially if you are using a newer lens with no aperture ring. You will only have the ability to change the shutter speed to gain the proper exposure, and the focus will be very very narrow.

I will say that purple is one of the most difficult colors to shoot photographically in the digital age. The color tone always wants to shift blue, so getting a true purple is actually very difficult. I did try this out last year, and got totally different results, but you can see those at Testing the Oil and Water Theory Close Up. So this is my interpretation of “purple” for this week. See you here again next week with whatever the theme happens to be next week.

Related articles

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(digital-photography-school.com)

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The Most Colorful Macro Flower Edition of Friday Feet

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I thought I would make today’s Friday Feet the most colorful set of flowers shot in this series. I spent most of the day in blasting 100*F heat cutting acres of dry grass so this was a nice break. The flowers are from the Stephens family from after their service yesterday (see previous post). They were nice enough to let everyone take home some flowers from what turned out to be one of the most beautiful displays of flowers I have ever seen at any service, and now they can live on forever on the interwebs. In fact, there were so many flowers that everyone who wanted any got to take some home and the lobby of the church was still filled with flowers when everyone left.

The shots below were macro shots taken at a 1:1 magnification ratio or greater. The orange rose with the water drops was slightly greater than 1:1 by using what is called an extension tube (basically 27mm’s of air between the lens of the camera body). I love macro photography. It has a tendency to show all kinds of details that we just don’t see through casual observation like the oil and water colors from a few weeks ago. The first show below of the two pedals is the big flower on the very top by the basket handle above. No special lighting or anything, the flowers were just that colorful. Have a good weekend everyone.

Testing the Old Oil and Water Theory Close Up :: Photos

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Something totally different for today. I thought I would try a little abstract photography last weekend. No special post-processing or photoshop on these images, just a simple mix of oil and water on a red and green flag. I always wanted to try some super closeup shots like this and I could have gotten in even closer but was limited to my one extension tube where normally you would stack them. All it takes is some water, a little cooking oil, put it in a bread pan and wait. The shot was done was with a 100mm macro lens and a 27.5mm extension tube (something that just puts space between your lens and the sensor for closer focus), sitting on a tripod of course. I love the colors but I could have shot with just about any color, I just tried to find two highly contrasting colors to make the oil moving through the water stand out. I have seen this done with a tidied shirt or something like that, and that works well too, I just didn’t have one. The exact shot metadata is over on Flickr if you are interested.

A Nasty Tomato Hornworm Caterpillar Closeup

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This is just about as perfect a photo of the day as I can get for summer in the south. These nasty things attack our tomato plants every year and they look so much like the plant leaves they are almost impossible to see. The only part you see is the evidence they were there (an eaten plant) and until you find them they will continue to devour everything in sight. They can get enormous in size if you don’t kill them quickly. Luckily this one was small, smaller than my little finger. The EXIF metadata is over here if you are interested in the macro shot.

Summer Food Photo of the Day with Red Seedless Grapes

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My photo of the day sorta screams summer to me… fresh fruit. I love red seedless grapes and when I picked these up yesterday on the way home from work they were too good not to shoot. These shots are never as easy as I think they are going to be but I like the way the colors turned out with this particular shot. bon appetit.

Macro Photography of the Phalaenopsis Orchid Flower

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I took this set of photos of my Father-in-law’s orchid while I was at his house for the festival and just now got around to posting some pics of them. This Phalaenopsis Orchid apparently comes in a huge variety of colors, this one just happens to be white with a tiny bit of yellow and red. Reminds me of a tiger orchid if one exists by that common name but anyway… you can see the EXIF metadata here and here if you are interested. Both of these shots were taken as shown in the third shot above, on a tripod, and had about an 8-10 second exposure, meaning there was no breeze or air movement whatsoever for the 8-10 seconds, didn’t happen very often in the hour it took to get the shot I wanted.

I have always loved macro photography (see some examples). Somehow you get to see something the human eye can still readily see, just not in such great detail unless you really pay close attention to what you are looking at, and most people don’t. There is a tiny little world that exists between the microscope level and exactly what we see with the naked eye, usually existing from what macro photographers call 1:1 or closer. Both of these shots above were taken just about at a 1:1 ratio or just a few millimeters shy. You can achieve some great macro photography results with very little equipment like the kit lens that came with your camera and an extension tube like the Nikon PK-13 (I picked up on eBay for $20 this week). For the most realistic results a digital SLR will work better than a typical point-and-shoot, even if you just have the kit lens that came with your camera, then just start testing out the minimum focusing distance your lens will achieve and see how close you can get. Try adding an extension tube between your camera and the lens and you might be surprised at some of the results.

Saturday Morning Macro Flowers Before the Heat Arrives

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I think I spent an hour or longer last night looking for a single wildflower to shoot and found nothing. We have had so little rain here this summer that nothing wild is blooming, until I woke up this morning and looked right outside my window. I always forget about these tiny little violet wildflowers. They open every single morning and are gone by about 9am. Of course they get more water than the rest of the scorched earth around here since they are close to the house. Ebby unwillingly sat among the flowers for me, so patiently. She can be like stone when you just place her somewhere, poor thing. If you want to see the EXIF metadata for the macro shots above go here or here. They were taken at “life-size” or a 1:1 macro. I love the reflection in the water droplet (and no I didn’t place that there, God provided a nice bit of dew on the flowers just for me this morning). You can actually see the house and my camera if you look close enough. Hope everyone has an enjoyable Saturday, and has someplace to stay cool.

Southern Magnolia sieboldii Blooms in Early Spring

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We have a tiny little Magnolia tree we planted about 3-4 years ago and all it does is bloom like crazy about this time of year. It never seems to grow or put out many leaves but the blooms are very pretty. It’s not the traditional Magnolia tree with the big waxy leaves, I’m pretty sure it is a Magnolia sieboldii tree but it really hasn’t grown much since we planted it, and today it is the photo of the day.

Nails Before the Trim Up Close

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Photo of the day today is something a little different.  Love the lighting and soft colors of the manicure before they are all trimmed up.  Yes, I was the photographer for this photo shoot.  Wasn’t something I had done often, or ever, but it was pretty cool.

Fall is Fire on the Mountain with Yellow Aspen Leaves

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Ok, well maybe not here in Auburn, but right now, the Aspen groves of the Rockies are ablaze with color. After flipping back over some fall photos of the last few years I came across this one, taken at this exact time of year, but at the 11,000 foot range in the Rockies. You can’t see the glorious fall colors that surround these tall pines from the photo, but at the time, it was about 40*F outside and the entire surrounding area was full of yellow aspen trees, like the one shown below. Fall has to be one of my favorite times of year, almost as much color in the fall (if you look closely) as there is in Spring.