Macro Photography, Ladybird

Macro Photography, Ladybird

I took this image with a Tamron 90mm 1:1 macro lens and I count it as one of my favourite images from the pictures I’ve taken.

I took this picture in Priors wood in the North part of Stevenage in June 2012. I’d actually gone to that part of Stevenage to take butterfly pictures because the year before I’d visited and found a butterfly photographers paradise with hundreds of butterflies of many different species everywhere. On this occasion however there were hardly any butterflies anywhere so I took a general look about to try to take some insect pictures.

I had only just bought the Tamron 90mm macro lens so this was one of the first pictures I took with it. It’s a definite improvement over the Tamron 70-300 mm telezoom which I had been using up to that point for macro pictures, but you do need to get a lot closer to the subject with a 90mm lens. Fortunately ladybirds don’t move very quickly so I was able to take this image hand-held at 1/180 sec.

Someone on G+ has pointed out that it would be a better image if I’d used some off-camera fill in flash to darken the background a bit; At the time I didn’t have a flash gun, but I have recently bought a Metz 58 af2 so I’m hoping to improve these time of pictures when I next go out to take insect pictures this springtime.

My other insect pictures are on my flickr account.