This is my favorite type of photography, I started taking macro pictures before I knew what macro photography was. A few years ago I took some pictures with my mom’s Fuji FinePix 1400 Zoom, this camera was about 1.5 MP. I got some really nice pictures of a butterfly on a butterfly bush. This was a great little camera it worked better than the Fuji FinePix A400 that she has now. This is an example of the pictures I took one August afternoon.

One thing you should know about macro photography is that you should get as close as you can focus. Macro photography is based on the depth of field which can be used to focus the subject and blur the background. The image above shows this example, but this can also be done with a portrait which will make you look at only the subject but adds more interest than a plain background.

I like to take pictures of flowers, which I usually use macro photography. The first thing you need to do to activate macro mode on your camera is to either go into your camera’s mode screen and choose the image of a flower, or in the case of my camera turn the dial to the flower.

Pressing the shutter button half-way will focus the image for you, to take a picture press it the rest of the way. I like to do this to let the camera focus in better and you can see what the camera is actually looking at which is always a good thing. If you want to obey the laws of photography you will place subject in the middle and then move it to either side to obey the rule of thirds (described more indepth in my previous article).

 The best thing you can do with macro photography is getting all the details. So go on get close enough for that bee to sting you, it only hurt for an hour. Isn’t the satisfaction of knowing you got that great shot enough to risk being stung? Oh, you don’t think that is a fair trade-off, well it does hurt a lot. I guess I am the only one crazy enough to do it then. Now go out and get stung.