One of the things which I spend more and more time doing is contemplating vantage points. Given the subject, where do I want to place the camera so that I can get an image which I like. For the kind of up close nature photography that I enjoy, two of the primary considerations are the Plane of Focus, and the background. Close up (macro) photography results in very narrow depth of focus, so you have to consider carefully what you want to appear in focus. The background of your subject plays a couple of important roles. One is the overall color and brightness and how that interacts with the subject. Another is proximity of objects in the background. Objects close to the subject will be less out of focus and blurry as compared to more distant objects.
These images illustrate some of my choices. They were taken in mid June on the West Beach and Dune Ridge trails in the Indiana Dunes National Park.
I wanted an overhead shot of this Eastern Prickley Pear flower, which meant that the ground and the rest of the cactus were not going to be very far away. To better highlight the flower I used a large aperture to create as narrow a depth of focus as I could.Here is another example where I choose to use a very narrow depth of focus. The bright red color of these galls (the “warts” you sometimes see on leaves) and the fact that they were lined up in an almost perfect straight line strongly suggested this vantage point.Here is an example where I wanted as much depth of field as I could get, in order to have as many of the hairs on the buds crisp and sharp as possible. In this case I choose to back up a little bit from the plant, which helps increase the apparent depth of focus, and used a fairly small aperture. Small apertures maximize depth of focus, but they also restrict the amount of light which reaches the sensor and that has to be balanced out by reducing the shutter speed. Plants and insects are almost always moving at least a little bit, so motion blur comes into play when you use longer exposures. This however is a fairly sizable and heavy enough plant that it was barely moving in the light breeze of that day.Another example where the interesting elements are arrayed in a line, with the unopened blossoms bracketed by the open ones. The subject was a good 15 feet off the trail so that helped with depth of focus. The fact that it was in bring light allowed me to stop down the aperture without having to sacrifice shutter speed. The background foliage was a good ways behind the subject which produced a pleasing smooth blurring effect.Another example of a subject where the relative distances allowed me to create two background layers, each nicely blurred.
