The art of macro and close-up photography allows us to capture the intricate details of small objects that are typically invisible to the naked eye. In this technique, the background is blurred to provide a greater focus on the tiny object – in this case, a young green shield bug on an Eryngium thistle leaf.
Macro photography also offers the chance to create a fantasy world of colours and shapes, which is what Netherlands-based photographer Angelo Richardson has attempted here. “This photo was taken as part of my ‘plausibo’ collection – a close-up and macro series of mostly insects that I found in our garden,” Angelo says.
“I’ve always wondered what the sky would look like if you lived on a planet within a globular cluster, a group of tens of thousands of stars tightly bound by gravity and orbiting together around the cores of galaxies. Would there be day and night? This image is a concept of what I think it could look like. No insects were hurt making this shot.”
“Lighting in macro photography is often a challenge. Your body and camera are many times larger than the subjects and block a lot of the ambient light. Because
of the wafer-thin depth of field, I used a smaller aperture in this series. This also requires a lot of light, so I used a studio flash with a softbox and a speedlight and reflector to fill in the shadows and painted craft cardboard was used for the background. The RAW file was edited in Lightroom and, apart from the basic adjustments, I used the Lightroom brush to draw a few extra stars.”
Angelo Richardson is originally from Aruba, but he has been living in the Netherlands for more than 20 years now. Michael began his photography journey in June 2007. Prior to that, he used to do webcam astrophotography, mostly taking pictures of planetary and lunar objects. Back in the days, he purchased a Canon EOS 400D camera with the intention of capturing dimmer objects in the sky at night. However, the unpredictable Dutch weather forced him to shoot other things!
Tech details
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Accessories: Tripod, Canon Speedlight 430 EX, 200Ws Studio flash with softbox
Aperture: f/9
Shutter speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 100
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