I like to challenge myself photographically, and close-up/macro photography offers plenty of those. But since that genre of photography isn’t part of my core activities, I had always postponed delving into the close-up world.
I needed to make a commitment, and as fate would have it, a few months ago, Bryan F. Peterson of the Perfect Picture School of Photography was offering his close-up photography class again for one last time. So I jumped at the opportunity. If you don’t know Bryan, he is a wonderful photographer, instructor and best selling author. Look him up on the web!
That class turned out to be a gold mine of visual ideas. One of Bryan’s assignment for the class was to photograph oil drops in water, using a colorful and out of focus background. At the time, I chose to do another assignment, but swore try out this idea after the class. A few weeks before Christmas time, I was able to find some colorful gift wrapping paper to use as a background and try it out.
It’s a very simple idea, but the results are quite striking.
In “Creative Digital Photography: 52 Weekend Projects” by Chris Gatcum, I came across another close-up photography idea that I wanted to try. Photographing smoke from an incense stick. Like most close-up work, this requires a lot of patience. And very good hand/eye coordination since the auto focus on your camera is of no help and one has to focus manually.
The two pictures above show some of the wonderful shapes the smoke from a incense stick can take. Note that I changed the colors in Photoshop to obtain more vivid images.
Seven of these images of oil drops and smoke are on exhibit at Joseph Pearce’s bar in Edinburgh until the beginning of June. They are part of the Edinburgh Science Festival & Spring exhibition organized by Vanessa Davila of “Delicartessen”.
Share this content on
by 
