Macro Photography

Macro photography in short is basically, close-up photography.
Special lenses can help to improve the quality and how close you can get to the subject without loosing any detail and create very crisp beautiful images.

Macro photography is all about filling the frame or getting close enough to your subject so the texture and definition of the object or subject you are photographing can shine through and produce fantastic photographs.
Macro photography can be used within the photographic industry in a wide range of ways and most notably through advertising.
companies will hire photographers to take pictures of there image they want to advertise and the best way of doing this is by macro shooting, getting very close to the subject so that the product is the centre of attention and will draw people to it.
A great example of macro photography within advertising is the company 'Apple' who have a range of electronic equipment from MP3's to laptops, monitors tablets and smart phones.

these images that are used to market Apple's products are very clean, crisp clear but most of all, they are simple.
the lighting that has been used is a very soft light and the backgrounds that are found on most of Apples products are block white or block black keeping things very clinical and beautiful. this allows for the viewer to be drawn directly and only to the product as there is no distraction away
from the actual product.

images from:
http://www.apple.com/








After looking at these images i was inspired to try out my macro photography brief inspired by the marketing techniques of apple, keeping things simple and clean with no distraction is the background keeping focus on the item.

The images that i have taken here are very much inspired by the Apple marketing images shown above.

by placing my objects on a reflecting table.

i used a simple light set up of one soft box giving a clean wash over the objects to heighten the detail in both the objects and reflection but to also heighten the white/grey background.

A well know Photographer who specialises in still life and macro photography is Toby Mc'farlan Pond.
his images are very stylised and could also be seen as a merge between photography and graphic design.

All of Toby Mc'farlan Pond's work is carefully thought of, for example, it is clear he thinks about composition as a massive factor in photography and how they can make a shot stand out as composition can be used in numerous ways to draw the viewer into the said piece.
Colour has been used aswell in his shots to give an impact, as with the first set of images i have provided of the red phone, Pond has used a white background to emphasise the bold brash red colour and thus enhances the overall impact of the shot.
with the grey image of the necklace, here Pond has thought about the metal and the sharp edges and has clearly reflected that in his background choice. finally the perfume bottle has been given a black background to make the deep midnight blue of the bottle look truly beautiful and he has also given the image a moonlight-looking glow around the edges to frame the bottle.

-images from  http://www.brydgesmackinney.com/photography/mcfarlanpond/index.html

After exploring Macro ohotograhy through an advertising perspective i have also looked at macro through a more predictive path.

With these images i tried going into a more natural view of Macro photography. here you can see a huge amount of detail and texture.
these images are also a great example of bold colour from the bright pink to the emerald green in the images.

As shown, macro photography can be used in a wide range of ways, from fashion to documentary and advertising to natural.
macro can be interpreted in a number of ways and that is why it is the most diverse type of photography.