For the first time we had a microphotography project as an assignment, which basically consisted of us walking all over the school with a spray bottle taking close up shots of newly-wet flowers and leaves. The camera body we used was the same as we have always used, but the lens was a special micro lens. Because of the lens’s specific depth of field, it was almost impossible to get a photo without selective focusing, which was really different than before. It was really interesting to see how the focusing was so different in microphotography than in other lenses, like wide angle.
The most interesting part of microphotography was seeing how the focus turned out in the final product. In some cases, I had meant to get more than one leaf or petal in focus, but only one turned out in detail, such as the following picture. The selective focus in this picture is of the leaf on the left side. When printing this picture, I had to burn the edges, especially the bottom, significantly so that they didn’t distract. Though I usually prefer not to have borders, I used them in this print because it brought out the leaves really well.
In the following image I burned the top of the print, testing several different times, making sure that it didn’t bring attention away from the flowers. The problem with burning the top was that the top right corner would get increasingly dark and distracting, so I had to make sure it stayed even. I brought up the contrast on this image because it helped to make the petals as well as the bee stand out and differentiate.
The last print I did was my favorite because of the flower itself, as well as the angle. Instead of being above the flower, I took it from the side, which made the selective focus was more obvious and interesting. The biggest challenge with printing this image was the contrast. Originally a pretty grey picture, I had to turn up the contrast a lot, making the magenta well over 100, so that the petals and the detail on them really stood out.
