The First Snow of the Year

Today in Lincolnshire (UK) we had the first snowfall of the year.   Just the opportunity I was waiting for to try some more macro work.

There were two shots I was particularly after.

First the old favourite, the red berry half covered in snow.
Second some winter flowering Jasmine.

After that whatever caught my fancy.

The equipment needed was fairly straight forward.   A Digital SLR, a macro lens and my macro flash kit. Once setup I was ready to go.

I set the camera to manual and a relatively slow shutter speed 1/80, this together with an aperture of f/22 to give at least some depth of field, always an issue with macro photography. This would also dramatically underexpose the background, giving me nice black none distracting backgrounds. The two flash heads attached to the lens to give illumination to my subject matter and I was ready to get some snowy, wintery images.

Hope you enjoy and please try yourself.  If you do not have a macro lens try an old 50mm standard lens, most will focus pretty closely, use your tripod and a slow shutter speed to get your exposure, use a piece of card to shelter what your shooting from the wind to stop movement.

If your a Canon or Nikon shooter, their respective macro lens are excelent but if the budget cannot stretch that far try the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di, a great lens and much cheaper.

Personally if your a Nikon shooter then the combination of the Nikor 105mm f/2.8 and the Nikon R1 Close-Up Speedlight Remote Kit is hard to beat if you have the funds.

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