Hello and Happy Tuesday from WPPI in Las Vegas!!!

This week we’re taking a break from blogging while we take in the experience of WPPI, and we’ve handed over the reins to some of our friends, and each day we’ll be sharing a blog from someone we love!

Today on the blog is Danielle from Danielle McIlroy Photography, talking about Macro Photography for photographers new to the art form. We’ve been friends with Danielle since we all lived in Okinawa (Japan) together nearly 10 years ago (wow, has it REALLY almost been that long?!), and Danielle is easily – EASILY – our favorite macro photographer in the world. She’s helped us over the years with the technique, and we’re so excited to have her share some tips for Macro Photography on our blog today!!

Take it away, Danielle!

Macro has been my favorite kind of personal therapy for several years now, but there was a huge learning curve for me in the beginning. I had to get used to shooting in an entirely different way from how I shoot portraits of my kids. I wanted to share a few basic tips with you that might save you some of the headaches and frustrations I experienced trying to get the images I saw in my head to show up on my camera.

The hardest thing for me to get used to when I first dove into macro was how small of an aperture I needed to get anything in focus. I loved to shoot wide open when I was taking pictures of my kids, but that doesn’t work out so well for macro shots. I regularly start out around f/11 and close down from there. As you can imagine, you’re going to either need a ton of light to shoot this way or you’ll need to compensate with your other settings by raising your ISO or by lowering your shutter speed.

To shoot true macro, you’re going to want to set the focus ring on your lens at the 1:1 ratio and then leave it alone… which means no autofocus. You’ll have to move your body/camera to change your plane of focus instead of moving the focus ring on your lens. This definitely takes some practice if you’re used to your camera nailing focus pretty reliably on its own. But part of the fun of macro is slowing down – using manual focus will help you do that.