Easter Close-up!

Well, it's Easter time this year! Enjoy! I decided to go out and take some photos of nicely painted eggs to share with my friends and this is what turned out.

Contrast is always a good idea. 

Contrasting colors also works great.

Placing objects in a line is not always the best thing.

A classic "family" portrait.

And here's my advice:

• Use various backgrounds for your shoot.
• Get colorful props
• If the eggs are too pale mind the light because you might if it's too strong you'll get harsh shadows and burnt areas.
• Work for the bokeh by getting close to the object, open the aperture wider (f4-f5.6 should do in most cases if you're close enough).
• You can shoot with your favourite portrait lens (I did not need a macro lens or a vario for any of these).
• Get a friend to take photos with you so you can have more fun.

Well, I guess this about covers it. For more questions and advice send me a message via the comment box below.

All the best and a happy Easter,

Kamen Kunchev

Macro and Getting Kinda Close

I decided to go back to details and shoot some macro these days. It's been a while since my last post and quite some time since I had the chance to go out and have some fun while shooting, so why not macro.

Getting really close and taking worthy photos could be quite a challenge especially if you don't own a good close-up lens (or none at all like me). I guess I must have become rather rusty with this as it took some time to take several nice images.

When you go shooting close-up photography it is essential that you have more than enough light and all the patience in the world. Don't expect to go home with tons of good images and be prepared to scrap lots of the photos especially when shooting at a wider aperture.

And talking about aperture, I wouldn't recommend going for those values that usually give you a swell bokeh in portraiture (f1.8-f4). At these you will be losing focus constantly and gaining blur. It all works on different scales when you get this close to objects so experiment a lot and take several shots of an a object while refocusing.

I do not own a macro lens but there are 2 ways you can get away without having to buy one:

1. Get one of those magnifying glass type lenses you can mount in front of your lens. These glasses will give you lots of distortion around the edges when mounted on wider lenses but will deliver nice results on a prime lens.
2. Or you can simply buy a reverse ring adapter for you 50mm prime lens and use it as a macro lens (if it has an aperture control ring)

Both of these methods are rather cheap you will have to focus manually to get where you want but it's a good start if you don't want to spend too much on casual macro shots.

You can also check out my tips on flower photography.

Have fun,

Kamen Kunchev