“Summer evenings, butterflies, and meadows… my very favourite combination for unwinding after work. This is an especial favourite as I got lucky with pre-sunset light filtered through the trees behind this tiny common blue, creating the gorgeous orange bokeh ball behind.” – Emma Varley
Today, Explore is populated with a curated selection of macro and close-up shots.
In this Explore takeover, we’re featuring the creative macro shots submitted by the Flickr community to this prompt on our Flickr Social group in addition to some highlights from the Macro Mondays group and some captivating photos with the Macro tag.
We hope the photos in today’s Explore will inspire you to try new techniques and experiment with macro photography with the tools you have. And, if you’re looking for inspiration, guidance, and prompts that can help you improve your skills, the Macro Mondays group announces weekly themes to encourage creative macro photography around specific subjects, so go ahead and give it a try!
Below are some of our favorite stories shared by Flickr members worldwide in response to our prompt. Thank you to everybody who engaged in the conversation!
“One reason why I like this is for the contrasting, almost clashing colours. A second reason is that it shows some fascinating details of an amazing flower. See how many buds there are! Macro photography often shows such details that we tend to miss. And a third reason is that I think the photo also works well purely on a formal or abstract level, even if you forget that it is a photograph of something. Again, macro photography offers many opportunities for this sort of focus on the abstract properties of objects.” – Illawarra Nature Photography
“I am more or less a macro newbie, so I feel it’s kind of presumptuous to suggest one of my own shots here. However, despite my self-critical nature, I am still somewhat happy about how this macro shot of a plain and simple raspberry turned out!” – simple.joy
“This is a focus-stacked image of an autumn leaf. Focus stacking is a method used in macro photography to increase the depth of field of the subject. A stack of images is used, and here I used 40 separate images. Starting from the front of the leaf and working towards the back, a picture is taken at 40 different focus points.” – Jackie Matthews
“This photo remains one of my favourite macros that I have taken. It is of a marvel of Peru, Mirabilis jalapa, flower. The flowers open at night and close in the morning. The flower is closing, and the stamens and style are retracting into the flower. There are small droplets of dew on the flower. The photo is cropped with some processing.” – photocheck2
“A macro portrait of my sweet Mittens as a young kitten. I love using macro lenses for portraits as most have wide apertures which make for beautiful background blur isolating the subject. It was taken with the classic Nikon micro 60mm macro lens adapted onto Fujifilm.” – Cattitude
About Explore Takeovers
Explore takeovers are manually curated by the Flickr team to celebrate specific communities and themes on Flickr. In the past, we’ve done Explore takeovers to highlight photography of the Black Lives Matter movement, Polaroid Week, Inktober, Black photographers and history, women photographers, and Earth Day. Moving forward, we aim to curate an Explore takeover on the fourth Thursday of each month. If there’s a specific theme that you’d like to see highlighted in an Explore takeover, leave us a FlickrMail here. And if you’d like to learn more about how Explore normally works, check out our recently published Explore report.
“Triplicated color reflections: a photo taken for one of the weekly challenges of the marvelous Macro Mondays group” – HansHolt
“Macro is not my field, but I love it. This is one of my few macros. That little snail happened to appear on my plate with fruit from the garden. I was very pleased and the photo, I think, succeeded.” – Helena Bezecna