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Insects, bugs and spiders make great photography subjects in that most people have easy accessibility to them, and done correctly the resulting images can be quite spectacular. Here are a few tips for anyone getting started in macro insect photography.

Camera Settings:

Switch to manual focus and lock it off at the distance you need. Then move back and forth till you find the sweet spot. Play around with macro rings and tele-convertors as well as your macro lens, and get a feel for the ways that you can apply both magnification and zoom in a single image. (When using zooms, watch for vignetting).

Switch to Aperture priority and use the smallest aperture for the maximum depth of field. Magnification decreases your depth of field so you generally want to be using the fastest possible lens at maximum aperture.

Lighting Options:

Pick your days for ideal light. Bright cloudy days are good and permit for quicker shutter speeds. Experiment with fill flash and reflectors to light your subject. With fill flash, use only the bare minimum to even things out and store colour. If your background isn’t ideal, try utilising shades to darken areas of high contrast.

External Flash will give you much greater control and better results. Always diffuse the light and/or reflect it. Bracket as much as you can and make a note of the settings you use, and get a feel for the best settings for your get at different distances and magnifications.

Try experimenting with a Tele-Converter after your Macro lens as this allows you to get the same degree of magnification from farther away, which helps you illuminate your subject more evenly.

Practical Considerations:

Show patience and move slowly. Study your subject and see how it behaves, then work out how to capture it. Decide on the most vital feature “customarily the eyes “that really must be in perfect focus for the photograph to work.

Get to know your subject prior to starting. When are they most active? What do they do at night? What plants do they feed on? What behaviors or habits make them unique?

Be aware of the background, depth of field and shade areas. Watch that your own shade doesn’t fall on your subject. Most insects are extremely sensitive to temperature, so even your breath can cause the insect to take flight. (Conversely, some beetles will freeze if you breathe on them, so take time you experiment)

In an open environment, give your subject time to become used to you before you move in. Once you are set, move in shooting fast all the way. Get heaps of shots from different distances and vantage points, bracket your exposures and vary your flash compensation.

Digital Darkroom:

Be super hard on your self and be ready to trash the majority of your images. This may be easier if you are completely clear on what you were attempting to capture before you started, particularly with regards the key feature of your subject.

Once you have deleted the images that missed the mark, you can do lots of digital editing to improve the remaining photographs. Most will be improved with some adjustment to the curves, contrast and color saturation.

Strong pictures can be improved further with easy cropping and rotation. On borderline photos you can apply selective sharpening to your subject and blur the background as required.

Commercial Considerations:

If you’re planning to sell your macro insect photography, then it’s worth taking some time to research both the market and the main competition.

It should come as not much of a surprise that competition is steep. Almost all photographers with a macro lens will go hunting for bugs to shoot at some time or other, and with some practice and patience, most will do a reasonable job of it.

You just have to look thru a few photo sharing websites to see that there’s just as many great images there as you’ll find on most pro stock photography libraries. In short , photo buyers are spoiled for choice when it comes to exceptional insect close-ups. You can stand proud of the crowd though.

Usually it comes down to shooting ‘behavioural ‘ shots as well as the ‘portraits’.

Most macro insect photographers always concentrate on the portrait type shot, so any time you can capture an image that demonstrates a behaviour or feature that make a species unique, you are getting something that most other people will miss and photo buyers can use.

The other thing most photographers don’t do well is, identify their subject. At best they could give their image a common name like ‘ant ‘ or ‘butterfly ‘ which is no use at all to a photo buyer wanting a specific species.

So. always make sure you identify the species with it’s full sclientific/llatin name, as well as any common names, and if you can add some engaging behavioural facts as well , even better!

Matt Brading

Visit GlobalEye Stock Photo Library to view extraordinary examples of macro insect photography. If you’ve got great macro insect photographs to sell, please review our Photographer Information (and download your free stock photography business kit) you will find out more about selling photographs online here.

Shooting photographs of natural environments, known most commonly as landscape photography, is one of the most popular and fun ways to get started in art of taking pictures. While it may seem simple to snap a couple of photos of a mountain or a hillside, it can be a bit more complicated than point and shoot.  With that in mind, here a few easy to implement tips to help your next outdoor shoot end successfully:

Slow it Down

One of the most important things about landscape photography is detail. The more detail you can get in your landscape pictures, the better your final limage will look.  In order to get a maximum depth of field and be able to capture the smallest detail, close your F stop as much as possible and use a slower speed film or setting with a longer exposure.

Choose a Focal Point

What is it about certain photographs of mountains that make them appealing, when others look boring? The answer is often found in the focal point of the image. No matter what subject you’re shooting, you need to decide on what is going to be the important part of that image and frame your shot accordingly. Landscape photography offers all kinds of different types of focal points such as trees, mountains, rock formations and many others to choose from.

Try Using a Filter

There are tons of filters available for cameras, each of which serves a specific type of photography. Polarizing filters will darken the sky in your image and help build contrast in the colors, which will lead to a more dynamic and interesting image when it’s time to print.  Whenever you’re working with landscape photography, try to consider the contrast before you shoot.  Generally pictures that have all one color or tone won’t be interesting

Time it Right

Depending on what you’re planning on shooting, different times of day are going to either hurt or help you.  Since the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the overall appearance of a landscape can be dramatically different in the morning than it is at dusk, so plan ahead on catching the perfect angle. We recommend morning and evening hours; the pitched shadows will add texture to your images.

Always Have a Tripod

Although carrying a tripod is a pain, it really is necessary with using longer exposures so that you can get the proper amount of detail in your landscape. Using a tripod will give you the opportunity to take the same picture with different exposures and will help to prevent image blur. Image blur can be a problem when you’re using a slow shutter speed (anything less than 60 is too low to guarantee clarity without a tripod).

Landscape photography is a great way to get started as a photographer. You never have to worry about difficult or impatient subjects and you get to go outside and appreciate the beauty of nature. With a little thought and the right equipment, you’ll soon be shooting beautiful landscapes that you’ll be proud to display in a picture frame on your wall.

Shooting photographs of natural environments, known most commonly as landscape photography, is one of the most popular and fun ways to get started in art of taking pictures. While it may seem simple to snap a couple of photos of a mountain or a hillside, it can be a bit more complicated than point and shoot.  With that in mind, here a few easy to implement tips to help your next outdoor shoot end successfully:

Slow it Down

Choose a Focal Point

What is it about certain photographs of mountains that make them appealing, when others look boring? The answer is often found in the focal point of the image. No matter what subject you’re shooting, you need to decide on what is going to be the important part of that image and frame your shot accordingly. Landscape photography offers all kinds of different types of focal points such as trees, mountains, rock formations and many others to choose from.

Try Using a Filter

There are tons of filters available for cameras, each of which serves a specific type of photography. Polarizing filters will darken the sky in your image and help build contrast in the colors, which will lead to a more dynamic and interesting image when it’s time to print.  Whenever you’re working with landscape photography, try to consider the contrast before you shoot.  Generally pictures that have all one color or tone won’t be interesting

Time it Right

Always Have a Tripod

Although carrying a tripod is a pain, it really is necessary with using longer exposures so that you can get the proper amount of detail in your landscape. Using a tripod will give you the opportunity to take the same picture with different exposures and will help to prevent image blur. Image blur can be a problem when you’re using a slow shutter speed (anything less than 60 is too low to guarantee clarity without a tripod).

Landscape photography is a great way to get started as a photographer. You never have to worry about difficult or impatient subjects and you get to go outside and appreciate the beauty of nature. With a little thought and the right equipment, you’ll soon be shooting beautiful landscape pictures that you’ll be proud to display in a picture frame on your wall.