Me, my camera and some pics

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This is my blog where I hope to show you some of the things I get up to with my camera. I shoot with an Olympus OMD E M10 and while I only have a few lenses I find they suit most of my needs. My main style of photography is macro and for this I use a M.Zuiko 60mm macro lens. This makes a nice lightweight and small combination which is ideal when carrying around and squeezing into odd positions just to try and get that shot. I have been using this combo for around 12 months and only now am I starting to get results that I'm really happy with. Below are a few shots from my recent sessions

Horsefly

Horsefly

Grassbug Nymph with exoskeleton

Hawthorn Shieldbug

When shooting macro alot of the time I use flash with a homemade diffuser/bouncecard which allows me to turn up the aperture to f8.This gives me a greater depth of field(DOF) and gives me more chance of getting the eyes in focus which is essential in my opinion. At f8 I still manage to get a reasonable bokeh as long as I pay attention to the background when shooting. 

Sorrel

At other times I will use natural light and use a larger aperture- occasionally going down as low as f2.8 if it gives the effect Im after. The problem with bright sunlight(and flash) is that sometimes you will be shooting a subject which has reflective highlights. This is particularly true of moths(which are my main subject) and it can be tricky to find the ideal conditions to shoot these in. I recently shot a few Nomad bees in bright sunlight and while the eyes came out with the detail I wanted there were spectral highlights all over the bodies(below)

Nomad Bee

 While you can see the eye is clear and well lit you can also notice the reflected sunlight off the wings and the upper abdomen. There is also a very clear shadow underneath which all shows that when this shot was taken there was too much light.

In future posts I hope to show how I get round these problems and also to introduce you to the moths I have mentioned. Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment