Lesson 16: Still Life and Macro Photography

Still life and macro photography are the quiet genres: instead of chasing the world, you bring the world to you. Still life is the arrangement of ordinary objects — fruit, books, tools, flowers — into a photograph; macro is the photography of very small things at very close range. Both are ideal for learning, because nothing moves, the light is under your control, and you can repeat the shot until it is right.

Still life begins with the arrangement. Choose a few objects that belong together, arrange them with space between them, and light them from the side — a window is the classic still-life light — so that shape and texture appear. A plain background, a table near a window, and a tripod are all you need to begin. The genre has a long history in painting, and the same lessons apply: simplicity, balance, and attention to the edges of the frame.

Macro: A World at 1:1

Macro photography means photographing a subject so that its image on the sensor is life-size or larger — a magnification of 1:1 or more. A dedicated macro lens, typically 90 mm to 105 mm, focuses far closer than an ordinary lens and is designed to stay sharp at that distance. At 1:1, a bee fills the frame, a water drop becomes a lens, and the veins of a leaf become a landscape. The cost is depth of field: at macro distances it can be a millimetre or less, so only a sliver of the subject is sharp.

That shallow depth of field is macro's central challenge. The solutions are to use a narrow aperture such as f/11 or f/16, to focus precisely on the most important part — usually the insect's eye or the centre of the flower — and to keep the sensor parallel to the subject so more of it falls in the plane of focus. Some photographers combine many frames taken at slightly different focus distances into one fully sharp image, a technique called focus stacking.

Light, Stability, Patience

Macro work needs light and stability. A small flash with a diffuser softens the light and freezes the tiny movements of a living subject; a tripod holds the camera still at the slow shutter speeds a narrow aperture demands. Insects are best photographed in the cool of the morning, when they move slowly. And the same patience that serves the still-life photographer serves here: the difference between a good macro photograph and a great one is usually the extra ten minutes spent on focus and light.