October Photo Challenge - VOTE NOW! Up Close and Personal

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Edited on November 2 by Shyflower: It’s time to VOTE for your favorite photographer. Who was closest and most personal in their photo or photos? This month, we’ve listed our competitors with their post number(s) following their names. Either cast your vote based on the photo you liked best or the over all body of work contributed. The poll ends on Nov. 9

The Challenge is to show us your favorite photographs that demonstrate Macro-Photograpy. The actual subject matter is left for your creativity.
Our world looks very different when you examine it at a very close perspective.
I have added a few examples here of flowers. This is an opportunity to experiment with Depth-of-Field and Framing to achieve interesting and captivating results.

To participate in our challenges it is not necessary to possess or use any special equipment. If you own a fancy camera and want to get some practice with it, that is great. But you could simply use a cellphone camera if that is all you have.

Remember that the camera is just a tool and let the artist in you USE that tool to expose your creativity.
Let’s see some creative, clever, imaginative, but never offensive in any way, photos of things at the closest.

As always, you are to upload only photos that you have taken. This is not a challenge to see how skilled you are at using Search Engines to locate images.

Yellows and Greens mix

Bottle Brush in Florida (my front yard)

Tulips in Georgia

Emerging Bud in Spring

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The first two taken in our garden.
The third (if I remember correctly) in the Rose Garden in Rome.
The last one in the hills in Umbria.

I’ve posted all of them before in these forums, but they do fit the challenge, so here they are again :wink:

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Here are a couple I took in the garden the other day. Our hedge seems to be a little confused by our changeable weather, and is still producing the odd rose amongst all the hips. These were a bit tricky to take, as it was very windy, so I had to hold the camera in one hand, and try to hold the branches steady with the other, without stabbing myself to death. :lol:

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In order to reduce a misconception that we MUST focus on flowers (or even Nature), here is an antique pocket watch that I purchased recently at an Estate Sale.

I don’t know the history of the watch. And it supplies the correct time only TWICE a day. But it is so ornate and intricately made I wanted to capture it in extreme close-up.

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I took these last week on the headland next to our house (and couldn’t find them when I went to post earlier :rolleyes:). The first one is a Peacock, and the second a Small Tortoiseshell.

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No such misconception on my part. But these are the only pictures I have available right now :slight_smile:

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Or on mine - but as I said, I couldn’t find the butterflies earlier so I posted my roses instead. And it’s perishing cold and wet here today, so I’ve enjoyed seeing all the summery floral pictures. :slight_smile:

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The vertical venetian blinds was a favourite hunting ground for preying arachnids.

I have seen them jump, so I did not get too close :slight_smile:

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I didn’t know what it was either. It was part of a sculpture but I thought it was interesting!

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This is from my macro period earlier in the year.

From memory it was taken with a microscope objective on a home made lens mount and I have no idea what the magnification would be.

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The second bug looks like glass or metal John_Betong.

You had better luck with butterflies than me TechnoBear - when ever I got close they flew away. I had some quite good luck with dragonflies in one location but again most of the time they were off before I had the camera focused. I need a longer lens; I tried a 70-200mm and it was still a bit short.

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That’s awesome!

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It sure is! @Rubble ; Looks like water, but drops don’t usually look like that. What is it?

@John_Betong ; I actually like spiders. They scare me to death, but I think they are fascinating. Your photos are as about as “Up Close and Personal” I care to get with spiders. :eek:

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Thanks @TomB & @Shyflower Those are bubbles from bubble bath; the strange thing is I tried washing up liquid and they gave a round bubble instead which was not as nice.
( I can not remember how to link to a member with the @ ! )

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[ot]

You have to put a ; at the end of the username (without the space you see when it’s posted)

@TomB; & @Shyflower;[/ot]

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OUTSTANDING photos so far! We are forming an amazing view of the world around each of us, from these very close perspectives.

I agree with @Shyflower about arachnids. They are fascinating; particularly the innumerable variations and sub-species. But they are a creepy creature that makes me cringe.

I am intrigued by this. Do you have any photos of that homemade mount? I did a lot of ‘home-brew’ photography equipment when I was very young. Many pinhole cameras and some exotic “special effects” mounts for [8mm] movies.

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Butterfly Conference?

Location:

Conference:

Closeup-001:

Closeup-002:

Exif Info:

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CONFERENCE?!!

WOW. That looks like a Confluence of Butterflies.

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At the time it looked to me as though they were having a conference:)

Anyway. I Googled and found that “Butterflies collective nouns” range from flight, flutter, rabble, rainbow, swarm but my favourite is kaleidoscope!

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@ParkinT; I have not taken many photos with it as I only have some damaged objectives that were being thrown out at work. I used to work at a company that made microscopes and I could have had all the objectives I wanted along with cheap microscopes as they used to take part exchange.

The felt in the tube is to cut down on reflection; I tried matt black paint but that did not work. I should have made it with a light stop and/or reeced the bore which would have helped.