Ok, so before we start, if you’re arachnophobic, you may want to skip this post because personally I love spiders, and when talking about macro photography, there WILL be spiders!

The photo of the bug on the road that I’ve shared here has always been one of my favourite photos, despite the low resolution. I took that with a small, simple compact camera and it kicked off my interest in close-up photography. Later after I bought my first system camera, a friend let me use her macro lens, and after seeing what I could do with it I immediately fell in love.

During a trip to Stockholm when I would have a full day to myself I planned to go to the Scandinavian Photo shop and buy my first macro lens for the Canon camera I had back then. My first real macro photo was of a pile of 10SEK coins in the hotel room.

Back home, I started shooting flowers, insects and spiders. Back then I still had such a fear of spiders that I would lock the room where I saw one to avoid having it running loose around the house. But my interest in macro photography would change this – I remember one evening in the autumn I saw a giant house spider on the floor in the basement and I crawled on all fours with the camera as close as I dared to, to attempt to get a good photograph of it.

I didn’t keep any of those shots. But what I remember most is the realisation how a macro lens can capture details that we can’t see with the human eye, and this in particular sparked my passion for macro photography.

This seems to be the only macro photo I’ve kept from my Canon days:

When I switched to a micro four thirds camera, one of the first extra lenses I got was of course a macro lens, the well-renowned 60 mm Olympus macro lens. I’ve had a lot of fun with this one!

I’ve continued to be fascinated by the amount of detail you can capture with a macro lens, details I didn’t know existed before seeing my photos. I kept shooting and practising but have always struggled to improve my photos, the learning curve with my lens was steeper than I thought it would be and I didn’t get close enough, and most good shots have been pure luck. Some year ago I decided to put some more effort in it but then we got a windy summer and I didn’t get much done.

Then I heard that most of those stunning macro photos we see here and there are made with dead subjects and focus stacking. Whether or not this is true, it was quite discouraging! How boring is it to shoot dead insects? And just the thought of focus stacking stressed me out – this was before I learned I have a built-in focus stacking feature in my camera, and before I learned to properly use Photoshop.

I decided to just keep doing what I was doing and to keep enjoying it. Eventually I looked up some blog posts to get ideas of how to better use my lens. I also learned that focusing for macro photography IS difficult, that it’s normal to have problems with nailing the focus, and that it isn’t enough to just set the focus in the camera, you need to fine-tune by moving your own position (if shooting handheld). Why do I always enjoy the most difficult things?

My husband gave me a focusing rail for Christmas some year ago. This is meant primarily for focus stacking but I see it as a useful tool for more precise focusing in general and it will certainly help in certain situations. Perhaps I’ll try some manual focus stacking too just to see if I can do it.

The unexpected effect of macro photography

I used to have a quite debilitating fear of spiders. I wouldn’t classify it as arachnophobia, but enough to get hiccups and run away if I found a large spider somewhere in the house.

However, when I started photographing them I learned to see the beauty in their colours and patterns, and I soon started learning more about different species and the fear turned into fascination and interest.

Now I’m happy to have spiders around, but I wouldn’t appreciate having the larger types crawling on me.

Sadly in our house in Ireland we have very few spiders, we may see the odd giant house spider in the autumn, and we have some other species around in the garden. Perhaps I just haven’t looked hard enough. Perhaps the more I create an insect-friendly garden, the spiders will come too.

Because of my fascination for them, spiders have always been my favourite subject for the macro lens.

Sadly, my activity with the macro lens has declined since moving to Ireland. Most of my photography (particularly macro) happens outdoors, and we live in a very windy area, near the sea and on the top of a hill. Wind is the worst enemy because a macro lens magnifies everything, including movement. If setting the focus is normally difficult, it will be close to impossible with some wind. In addition, on windy days all those beautiful spiders will go into their hiding places. So my interest in macro photography has faded, no matter how much I love it.

But macro so much fun and I want to bring it back into my life. There surely must be ways to still do it, even in a windy garden? This year I’m determined to put some effort in it again, and find other interesting subjects that I can photograph even in less than ideal weather conditions. There’s lichens, fungi and similar… And we do get less windy days. Spring is the season for ladybugs and the possibility to find those beautiful nursery web spiders in last year’s debris.

There’s also the option of indoor projects, like this fun figurine project. But perhaps with a more interesting story to it than a guitar player sitting on a lens cap (my creativity is in a total slump right now)!

Do you have any ideas of fun macro photography to do indoors? What would you do with a macro lens on a windy day? What is your top tip to set the focus for macro photography? Please share!

If you are also struggling with your macro lens, here’s a good article I found: https://photographylife.com/how-to-focus-in-macro-photography