Creating close-ups can be challenging and very rewarding. It gives us time to study our subject, and to become more familiar with the photographic equipment we have. Today's cameras and lens have all but replaced the bulky bellows, close-up tubes, rings, filter diopters, and awkward setups sometimes needed to achieve a good close-up image. With macro lenses, smarter cameras with built-in flash and faster film/CCD's, the amateur can achieve very good results using affordable equipment. I myself very much enjoy taking extreme close-ups, and I will present here some of the ways I've accomplished this.
Here's a look at some techniques I use for close-up photography.
The original image is 1712x1368, and reduced here to 200x160 to conserve bandwidth. The interesting part is actually the spider, which is intent on making a home out of this particular flower. You can just barely see the spider to the right of the center whorl, on the yellowish part of the pedal.
But here, it is enlarged!! Actually, what I did was select the area around the spider before I reduced the image, thereby creating the effect of zooming in. The spider image is about 5x normal size.
I've apply Unsharp Mask to bring out some of the detail in the spider. Unsharp Mask can make quite a difference if used. Go here for my Using the Unsharp Mask tutorial.
Taking close-up pictures can be very rewarding. It gives you a second chance to study your subject, and see detail you'd normally miss.
For example:
You can make out the reproductive parts of this flower. I've labeled them for your edification. The original image is 1712x1368. If you have any projects you're doing, and need close-ups, using the text tool in your image editor will help to illustrate what you want.
