Pierre Steenberg

Angles and backgrounds

August 25, 2024 • Leave a Comment

As you move your position, you also move where things appear in your images relative to each other. For example, you can move something in the distant background's position relative to something in the foreground by moving to the left or to the right. By lowering your position you can shrink the middle-ground space. By moving upwards you can stretc...

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Macro Series, Part VII: Post Processing Workflow

July 21, 2024 • Leave a Comment

Post processing is always subjective. We process our images to taste, and taste is personal, subjective. Furthermore, there seems to be a million ways to achieve the same effect in post processing. So, my way is certainly not the only way and your mileage may vary. This is how I process my macro images: Since I take multiple stacks of the same sce...

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Macro Series, Part VI: Composition and Tips

July 14, 2024 • Leave a Comment

Great macro images do not become great simply because of being macro images. Yes, the details and often never seen before (for most people) intricacies of an insect or flower petal does command the viewer's attention but that is not enough. If the image is not a great image, people will look at the image for the intricacies' sake rather than becaus...

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Macro Series, Part V: Technique

July 07, 2024 • Leave a Comment

We will break this discussion into two parts, one part dealing with handheld shooting and one part discussing static studio style shoots. First, shooting handheld. Turn focus peaking on (if you use a mirrorless camera). If you are using a lens such as the Laowa, which I suggested you use in the weeks leading up to this blog, then you will need to s...

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Macro Series, Part IV: Settings

June 30, 2024 • Leave a Comment

So we now have the equipment needed for macro photography. What settings work best? We already mentioned that we will use manual focus (which we will discuss during next week's blog). Let's start with the fixed settings and then work our way to the variable settings. As a rule of thumb the following settings work well: Set the ISO to a value of ar...

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Macro Series, Part III: Macro Equipment

June 23, 2024 • Leave a Comment

In macro photography your exposure is controlled by the flash. Even though you set your shutter speed, you flash is what freezes your subject because the duration of the flash is very fast, much faster than your shutter speed. So let's start with the flash. The good news is that you don't need an expensive flash. A manual flash is all you need. It...

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Macro Series, Part II: My Macro Journey

June 16, 2024 • Leave a Comment

Being forced to expand what I photograph and because of the reasons mentioned last week, the decision was made to start my macro photography journey. First, I visited the University of YouTube. Many YouTubers say conflicting things, but if you look at enough videos (at two times the play speed to save time) soon a general consensus start to appear...

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Macro Series, Part I: Why Macro?

June 09, 2024 • Leave a Comment

Macro photography has never interested me, that is until now. Sure, great macro imagery has always been fascinating to look at, but for some reason never inspired me to try it. Perhaps the reason for my lack of interest was that I never owned a macro lens and the once when I played with a friend's lens the very narrow depth of field (the small part...

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Why do photography?

June 02, 2024 • Leave a Comment

Photography can be hard and miserable. The weather can be freezing or be too hot. It can rain. The equipment can get heavy, especially after a long hike. The conditions do not always cooperate. We have to get up way too early and return from a sunset far too late. Besides, the gear is expensive. So why do we do photography, and I am talking about l...

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Processing dim lit subjects

May 19, 2024 • Leave a Comment

AI software has made image editing much easier. With one click the software can select your subject. This let's you make changes to your subject without affecting the rest of your image. This has been what have set the pros apart from amateurs for years. Amateurs typically made global adjustments (that effect the whole image), while professionals m...

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