StampCollector

The world looks different through a macro lens.

This post is a new one for me – I’m not even going to try and tell a story, weave a narrative, or dazzle you with a rhetorical flourish.

Instead I thought it was time to post a selection of the pictures I’ve taken using my trusty old Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 Micro lens, the pocket-sized close-up demon which, sadly, has been the most under-used lens in my bag througout this whole trip.

At the top of the post is a vividly-coloured flower growing in the humid tropical forests around Banos, Ecuador.

Above, in contrast, are tiny (honest) wild blueberries spotted in the scrubland of the Torres del Paine national park in Chilean Patagonia. Although the strong midsummer sunshine in Patagonia made normal photography tricky after early morning, the midday sun was perfect for this kind of shot.

In the botanical gardens of Bogota, Colombia, most of the country’s incredibly varied plants and flowers are on show for visitors.

Out in the countryside those flowers are on display, in the wild. I have no idea what this one is – any suggestions welcome – but we’ve nicknamed it the Colombian Slut Flower. Spotted by the side of a road near Salento, Colombia, in the humid coffee-producing region.

At the Lost City in Colombia’s northern jungles, daily rain storms keep the plants happy and help clear the mountain skies.

The dark rain forests around the Lost City conceal thrilling and strange plant life, but low light makes accurate macro work difficult without setting up a tripod or compromising on image quality at higher ISO settings.

At 4,300m on Volcano Ruminhaui, Ecuador, the plant life is tough and hardy. And with cloud cover rolling in to obliterate the view, this tiny web-coloured thistle caught my attention. Unlike many of the macro shots I’ve tried, I had my tripod around for this one, so I was able to keep the shot steady and sharp. I’m not so pleased about the out of focus foreground branch, but the important things are all there.

And back in the Torres del Paine, this delicate sprout demonstrates how the small and apparently frail can survive in the often harsh climate of Patagonia.

I’ve seriously under-used the macro lens on this trip – it either needs really good light or a tripod to get the best from it, and the other zooms I have are obviously more versatile and useful day-to-day. But if you like the pictures here, you can see more macro shots – most from before my trip to South America – in this Flickr set, Macrography.

Technorati Tags: travel, photography, macro, nikkor60mmmicro, nikond80, ecuador, colombia, chile, patagonia, torresdelpaine, plants, flowers, flora