Faking Macro

I am musing on macro over at Mortal Muses today, and thought I would share a bit here about how I "fake" macro. I don't have a macro lens to speak of, so I used my 50mm lens for these shots. The light was low, so to get the focus on the detail I needed to set up on a tripod, something I rarely do. At an aperture of f/4, exposures were 1/3s to 1/4s. For the shot below, shared on Mortal Muses, I got as close in as I could with the 50mm lens, which has a minimum focal distance of 1.5 ft (0.45m).

In post-processing, I had to crop in further to get the view above. It was a vertical image that I cropped horizontal, and about 50% of the original image is gone to zoom in further. (I'm having some computer problems at the moment, or I'd share the original image too!) Converting to black and white helped to make the image a bit more mysterious, and keep the focus on the light/dark contrast and the lines, which is what caught my eye to begin with.

What am I photographing here, you might ask? A decoration in my bedroom, next to the window. I was wandering about my house, looking for something that would be interesting as "macro." Who knew such interesting light and lines were lurking there, just waiting for my camera.

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