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.
