Hi all!
If you don't know me, I'd like to introduce myself - my name is Daniele Delgrosso and I'm the new Gallery Moderator for Macro Photography. I wish to thank the wonderful Danie $Moonbeam13 for giving me the opportunity to join the Community Relations team

My responsibilities as GM involve maintaining the Macro Photography Gallery and ensuring it's looked after (e.g removing miscats) and providing any help I can with Macro Photography. I'm also a huge community supporter, I spend a lot of time showcasing unknown/hidden deviants so they can become more familiar and popular on the site as well as promoting current contests and other fantastic stuff going on around deviantART.

The purpose of this news report is to talk about the concept of Macro Photography - what it is and what it involves. Over the past few days of running the Macro Photography gallery, I've found many miscats (deviations submitted in the wrong gallery) and it's led me to believe that a few deviants might not exactly know what Macro Photography is.

What is Macro Photography?

Macro Photography is a type of close-up photography bringing life-sized photographs of small objects. You can determine whether a photo is macro by the ratio of the photograph. The ratio describes how "big" a picture you get at the closest possible distance for the particular lens. So, for example, a 1:1 ratio or closer gives an image on film that is equal in size or larger than the subject being photographed.

More about Macro

1:1 ratio means that 1mm of the subject will cover 1mm on the cameras sensor, 1:2 gives 1mm on the sensor for 2mm of the subject. So a macro lens with a 1:1 will be capable of giving more detailed close ups.

A pure macro photograph is usually from 1:1 going further to 10:1.
However, ratios from 1:3 down to 1:1 are technically also macro/close-ups.

NOTE: Cropping a photo does not make it a macro photo!

Both of these types of photographs are suitable for the Macro Photography gallery on deviantART, anything over 1:3 is not macro and should be submitted to other relevant galleries.

What do you need to photograph Macro photos?

If you're thinking of taking photos at 1:1 then you'll need either a macro lens or a standard lens with other accessories connected to it (such as reverser rings, extension tubes etc...) Many digital cameras come with a setting called 'Macro' - the fact is though these cameras usually can only take photos up to 1:4/1:5 with heavy cropping. If you want to learn more about Macro photography - stay tuned to my journals and news reports as I will go further in-depth about macro photography in the future.

Examples of Macro and Non-macro photos

When I take a look at the Macro gallery every few hours, I see many miscats - so I'm going to show you two examples of photos, one which is a suitable macro and one which isn't:


These photos are not macro because the subject is too far away from the lens, also notice the bokeh isn't very strong.


These photos have been photographed with the lens very close to the subject using a smaller ratio, also notice that the bokeh is quite strong so the depth of field isn't shallow.

Where should your deviation be submitted?

Here are a few examples:

Nature: A flower can be put in the Macro gallery but an entire flower bush belongs in Animals/Plants/Nature > Flowers/Plants gallery. Water drop photographs are perfect for the macro gallery, as long as the water drop is the main subject and covers at least 1/3 of the photo.

Human: A photograph of one human eye could be put in macro, but a close up of a face belongs in a suitable category within People/Portraits.

Objects: A close-up of a coin/watch are suitable for the macro gallery, but cars/doors/windows/dolls and figurines are not, they belong in other galleries such as Architecture or Still Life.



I hope this news report has provided you with some more information on the Macro Photography Gallery, if you have any other questions or help feel free to note me or e-mail me. Thanks so much!

Daniele
^dandelgrosso