Say Hello to My Little Friend

I've always believed that the quiet anchor to The Clarity of Night is photography. I'm only an amateur (as if I had to tell you that, LOL!) A wannabe. But I did go through a pretty big photography stage as a teenager, and I have to admit, that it's become another treasured creative outlet for me. Anyway, you get the picture. (Pun intended.)

So back to blogging.... My theory has been that to effectively write in this internet/blog, you really have to adopt a more multimedia approach to build interest and harness its full power. Photography, videos, music...it's all good. All the photos you see here are mine, except on rare occasion. I use photos to inspire me and use stories to inspire photos. Once in a great while, I even post a little bit on photography itself. (Ahem.)

If you've been with me a while, you know I often love to explore close, small subjects. Like the post just below this one. Buds, insects, frogs, flowers, etc. I like get right in there. However, I've lacked an essential tool to do it relatively well. And that's a macro lens.

For those non-photographers out there, macro lenses are specialty lenses that can achieve a subject ratio of 1:1. Basically, that means that the subject will appear to be actual size on the camera sensor. However, since photos are viewed much larger than the size of the sensor, finished photos have a magnified effect.

Why am I blathering about this? Well, without further ado, let me introduce the Nikkor AF-S Micro 105mm ED VR lens (pictured above). I treated myself for my birthday (thanks Aine!!), and snagged this baby. It's my first professional-grade lens. CAN YOU TELL I'M EXCITED?!

Another cool thing about this lens is that the focal length (105mm) makes it a good portrait and general subject lens. I'm thinking I'll get lots of use from it, although my previous workhorse lens will still be important in my landscape photography, especially when I do shots from a moving car.

Here one extra tidbit. The picture in the last post features an impossible range of focus. Macro lenses have notoriously thin fields of view. For example, here is the same shot, but with only the back of the twig in focus.

For last post's picture, I've used a technique called stacking. It's a composite picture formed from 5 different shots, each having a different part of the subject in focus. The stacking program then integrates all 5 shots by choosing only those portions in focus. The end result is a single picture with everything in focus. Pretty cool, eh?

Anyway, I don't talk photography much, so thank you for indulging me. Now and again, I get the itch.