Macro Adventures

I have recently been thinking about macro photography, It's something I've always loved but never really got in to, so I went out with my macro lens and had a go. The initial results were good, but not for why you would think...

Although I am very pleased with these photos and I like them a lot none of them were actually taken with my macro lens. I found that a small shake I have always had in my hands is magnified when using the lens (as I suppose it would be) but despite that I was as pleased as I always am at the results from my kit lens.
At this point I started looking for a macro lens with Vibration Reduction on it like my kit lens does.
After fainting at the price I went in search of alternatives. What I found was something called extension rings, these are basically hollow tubes that force the lens to focus closer to the object you are photographing. It was also at this point that my lovely partner got me a gorillapod for our anniversary. usually I don't take my tripod out and about as I'm generally photographing things that are either moving or in the middle of undergrowth next to the ground so it has no use. This one however can get pretty much anywhere I can and is small enough that I can just lift it up if something else suddenly catches my view so it's perfect!
After a bit of messing around at home I went out for a test run.
Here are some of the results of that.

I am very pleased with the outcome and will be continuing along these lines for a little while. I am hoping to eventually put together a book containing images like these throughout the year to encourage people to take a closer look at their surroundings.

I am also tieing this in with a landscape project we have been given at uni and this will add to the image selection for both that and my book, 

The idea behind it connects my love of macro photography with something else that is close to me, sight, people see but they do not observe, I am quite observant despite not being able to see that well, being almost totally blind in one eye I have struggled with sight all my life, I find reading quite hard and suffer from headaches constantly due to eye strain. This also makes me very nervous of the future. I am a very visual person and without my sight I don't know what I would do so I really want to encourage people to take the time to see what they are looking at as opposed to just taking everything for granted.

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