Monday, April 24th, 2017
This week’s theme for the Flickr Macro Monday group is “Intentional Blur.” From this week’s instructions:
RESTRICTION: NO TIMEPIECES this week!
I think it will be fun to try a camera technique called “In Camera Blur” or “Intentional Blur” to show motion in a subject. I have put together a lovely little gallery to give you an idea of what I mean by this technique. There are also many online tutorials you can find but to begin with, here are a couple of “how to” links to get you started. Look here and here. The two links do not show macro images at all, but the steps to follow are right on target and should enable you to have success with this technique. My suggestion (from past experience) is to take a lot of photos to get a couple of good ones. It is definitely a worthwhile camera skill to have at your fingertips. You may groan (and curse) as you attempt this technique, but I think you will be very happy with the results.
Many of the photos will be abstracted and blurred–this is what we are aiming for so don’t be put off by it. Remember we want to SEE the motion–so do not “FREEZE” it. Your shutter speed will be slow, not fast.
Mating in the Wind
It’s so fun to go into your backyard and look for magic. I had my macro lens on my camera and my camera set up low on my tripod. I knew that I would want any in camera blur to be intentional and solely from the wind. I found this tiny bud of a flower with what looked like (to my naked eyes) roly-poly bugs clinging onto the blossom as the wind whipped them back and forth. Once I downloaded the image, I could see that these were beetles and that they were mating.
Nikon D750 | 105mm | f/9 | 1/5 | ISO 200
Busy Bee
We have milkweed planted in our field to attract butterflies and bees. Getting a shot of the bee approaching was easy but I thought the other image was a little more dynamic and pretty, so that’s my submission choice.
Nikon D750 | 105mm | f/7.1 | 1/15 | ISO 250
Thanks for looking!