Hello Photography Friends -
Here are a few favorite close ups of roses from this past season taken with my Fujifilm 80mm macro lens (120mm full frame equivalent).
A bee-friendly rose called "Scepter'd Isle"
I try to create a sense of stepping into a magical world with close up shots. In this photo, the foreground is a bit blurry so I didn't quite get the quality I was looking for but the photo reflects what I'm trying to do with macro photography. The rose is called "Lyda Rose". What goes through your mind when you press that shutter? Are you trying to capture and share a magical world too?
Stamen shot of "Sunglow", a very fragrant rose with a simple form but it's not a single.
Last year I submitted a photo of this rose that won second place in the American Rose Society Digital Photo contest in the category of capturing a fully open rose with the stamens showing. However, I didn't see a very obvious "petaloid" that was partly blocking the stamens so I got points off. I learned to carefully inspect and groom a rose a bit before taking a photo, just as you would groom it in an exhibition. Even with this past experience in mind, I often look at my photos in Lightroom Classic and see insects, dirt, blight, etc.!
Back in January of this year, I read reviews and watched a lot of Youtube videos from professional photographers that shoot with the Fujifilm system and there were mixed feelings about the 80mm, primarily because it was very heavy and like many macros, it doesn't do well in low light conditions. However, I decided that if I wanted to take photos that could be called macro photography, I needed a macro lens. So I took the risk of buying one which was expensive but I got a Like New condition lens at about $800, well below the cost of something similar in the Nikon or Canon world. The pros were right that it was very heavy and didn't handle dim morning light well but I used it everyday and finally got comfortable with it. Although it's not a macro or close up shot, I even produced a photo with my 80mm that is on the cover of the American Rose Society's 2021 calendar. I was shocked to find out that it was chosen over 1500 other photos from 200 ARS-member photographers. Due to the pandemic, many rose societies couldn't hold their annual exhibitions so people turned to virtual rose shows so there was a huge response to the calendar competition this year.
The point of this story is that I sometimes agonize over camera equipment choices (and all kinds of other choices too) and sometimes don't act. So the main photography lesson that I learned this year was "go for it" you can always fix it later.
Ann
