P#20 Q4: A Creative Approach to Macro Lens Photography

A Love Affair with Macro

Bryan Peterson: I love that question. If everybody had a macro lens, it would be an amazing world we lived in. By that I mean the visuals that would start popping up in places like Flickr, not to mention personal websites. The quality of the work, just the amazing imagery would shock the world. When people would see stuff, they would say, "That can't possibly be." Yes it is.

You will discover so much more stuff to shoot if you have a macro lens. My first suggestion for shooting more creatively is to get the darn thing up to your eyeballs. As funny as that may sound, it's absolutely imperative that one does that for the reasons that are obvious. You don't see the world macro as a human being. You don't. You can't even see up close like a macro lens can.

If you're going to sit there and walk across the green grass with the lens hanging around your shoulder, and you're looking straight ahead, you have a civilization of macro photographs at your feet. All those dew drops you just knocked over. Within every one of those drops is a fisheye lens that is giving you a view of the world directly behind it.

But you wouldn't know that unless you put the lens up to your eye and focused close. That's the key.

I need to stress something here. I'm not talking about macro zooms. I'm not talking about wide angle zooms that have a macro setting. I'm talking about a real honest-to-goodness macro lens. That, my friend, will give you amazing images if all you will do is put it up to your eyeball and try this exercise.

Go run around your shag carpet and you will find this one piece of carpet that still has some ketchup stains on it. You will photograph that and yet everyone's going to swear that it looks like a tree in fall color. You say, "No, it's actually one shaft of my shag carpet with ketchup stains."

They go, "I had no idea. I thought it was a beige trunk of a tree with red leaves."

It's those kinds of discoveries that only a macro lens can reveal. If you consider the amount of territory that a macro lens can cover in a ten square meter area -- a ten square meter area could conceivably keep you busy for six months. Having said that, the world all of a sudden is a huge, huge place for us macro shooters.

I also suggest people get out of their comfort zone. If you're a nature photographer, ban nature for six months. Go to a junkyard. People think they can't do it, but they can, and they'll make some phenomenal discoveries doing so.

I've done this in countless workshops. Students get this phenomenal look of disgust in some cases. They're like, "Are you serious, we're actually going to go into this place?"

I say, "Yeah, this is a wrecking yard, man. I want you to do nothing but take your macro lens. I'm going to show you some things that you never imagined shooting."

Lo and behold, they come away with a phenomenal awareness of some pretty amazing stuff that they would never have normally shot. Again, the macro lens is a great lens, but only if you're going to put it to your eyeballs and take a look.

Audri Lanford: I love it. Actually, if I had to pick a favorite lens, it would be my macro lens.

Bryan Peterson: I would have to agree with you. I just finished a brand new book called Understanding Close-up Photography. The entire book is all about close-ups yet the subtitle, to be clear, is says Understanding Close-up Photography: With and Without a Macro Lens.

I have reignited my love affair with the macro over this past year. It's been a great, great run. Like I mentioned, it's really got me all excited in many respects all over again about the wonderful and incredibly rewarding world of macro photography.

Audri Lanford: When is that book going to be available?

Bryan Peterson: Understanding Close-up will be out in March of 2009.

In Closing

You want to see the world through new eyes? Put a macro lens up to your eye. According to Bryan Peterson, there's a world that awaits us -- a world many of us never see. A macro lens is your key to that world, and in using one you can share it with others.