What has happend to all the macro images/photographers....???

It summer time, and lots of bugs everywhere :-)

Sorry to say this, but I have not seen a good macro here on 1x for a few days now :-(

Just curious :-)

/Wulff

Shoot one and post it...otherwise why whine...??? Just a little hillbilly wisdom for a Monday morning!!

Im not whining, just wondering :-)

And I miss all the amazing macro shot's here on 1x....!!!

/Wulff

Well, I've made some last week and two were rejected ;-)
I'm an absolute beginner in macro...

The whine remark was qualified as "hillbilly wisdom", a common form of satire here at the Beamer household.

So are u gonna go shoot one or not?? I will if you will...

Easy to why that one was rejected, it has a hole in it...!! lol, still my fav of the bunch!!

I know Clyde :-)

Maybe I will try to shoot one, but it is raining here in Denmark :-(




Nice shot, sad it did not make it :-(

Maybe I should say, that it is the insect shots Im missing :-)

/Wulff

Kaveh, you pointed the macro-objective the wrong way! :-)

Thanks again clyde.


I'll do that in my next life ;-)


hmm??

My first post in this forum.

I upload macros, and most of them gets rejected.

But a couple of them passed, and I promise I will keep trying.

Jens

Well that seems to be the problem with many macro shots here on 1x :-)

But Im looking forward to seen more of your work...!!

/Wulff

Hello...

I'm not shooting insects.. but same for my images.. rejected.. :))
But.. we never know ;)

Well,- the last three of my macros made it to member screening, and one of them passed.

Macros from other photographers have been published too, so it looks like the evil circle has been broken :-)

Jens

I got 2 accepted this week - but maybe, u dont think they are good :)
I allso got 4 rejects:)



Thomas

Your macros are fantastic Thomas.

Jens

I do have to say that I used to shoot quite a bit of macro, but had trouble getting them accepted on 1X - not whining - merely realizing that I still have a lot to learn in macro.

I do contribute on macro,,but "it did not make the CUT" :-(

It's very difficult to be published in macro section.
The level is high.
For example this one was rejected :


105 macro, f3.8 at 30 cm.
and rejected !

It's like that :-)))

Not always, sometimes it seems as if it is random what goes through screening. I see a lot of amazing macroes in screening, but sadly many of them never makes it. And then sometimes there will be published pictures, which I believe is not up to 1x quality!!

But I am probably wrong :-)

More recently, I have no idea what is 1x material or not. I am very confused at the moment....!!

/Wulff

PS:

I like your shot, but I think DOF is a bit too short :-)

Hi Niels,

looking to the first pages of the most popular macros on 1X makes understandable why a lot of macros are not passing the screening - they might be technically perfect, but often the story and the famous impact is missing - the typical "butterfly sitting on a diagonal branchlet" is IMO not enough to get published.

Cheers,
Thomas

Yes you right... I have to work, that's good !

Hi Thomas :-)

Yes most published macros are truly amazing, and the first few pages of most popular is excellent!!

But I still think that to many nice shots are rejected, and to much crap is published sometimes :-)




Yes that is true, but I still think images should be tecnically perfect!!

/Wulff

Niels too much emphasis on the "too much crap" is really a angry statement & I do not think it will endear people to your cause. I have been crawling in amongst the creepy crawlies of a small park near me with the idea to get some experience & even though I have some success my images are not yet at the standard I recognise on 1x & on other more specific sites. It is an area I really love to be accomplished in but so recognise that the world in miniature though no different to normal size (for us giants) is still about composition light critical focus & excitement when it comes to giving the viewer a visual experience. This is not the place to "rescreen" or critique images so I will say nothing about the example you added just that take what you see as a challenge to your creative ability & stop your mind telling you that others efforts are good or bad & put this energy into positively looking at how you might improve!

I'm sorry, Thomas, but I would like to disagree here. I know that crew members say that they reject images that are similar to those that are published before (because of diversity reasons). I cannot always follow this view. But what I also dislike is the fact that the crew itself does not consistantly follow it's own demand. Very often we CAN see images very similar to previous posted ones. And that's OK if these images show beauty and technical perfection.


In terms of macro images I fully agree here (and in terms of most of the other categories, too!). But my impression is, that 1X does not always shares this viewpoint.

I totally agree :-) :-)

/Wulff

This category, like most others, is suffering from the "popular vote" inconsistencies here on 1x. On any given day an image get passed to one crew member or another for initial screening, then passed to member screening. The members who happen to be active on that day or days then votes. Most of the time the popular vote is accepted and the image is published or not based on that vote. (This all according to the crew in previous forum threads about screening) There is, sadly, less and less of a 1x view because the "mob o' the day" has wildly varying views.

The inconsistency is alarming sometimes. Just try to hit a moving target with that big macro lens...

Hi Peter, no problem :-)
Maybe I have choosen the wrong words as more or less most of the butterfles are sitting on a branchlet.
No, I mean these analytic ultra-sharp pictures which are good for a biology text book, but missing any spirit, story and therefore impact.
Once playing with an interesting DOF, lighting, colours of the background, etc..also a butterfly on a branchlet can be a great photo !

Cheers,
Thomas

Well you might be right, but that is just the way I feel at the moment.

sorry...!

/Wulff

Hi I am new here on 1x and I am amateur photographer. I dont have artistic feeling and I am not skillful on Photoshop. But I am interesting on macro photography. I try to upload some of my macro photos. But when I look on fantastic photos here I think that my photos will not be accepted in screening.

Excuse my bad english.

Hi ! Patrik welcome to the 1x community .. I am certain if you persist you will find your niche' here !

best wishes,
divemako

Thanks for welcome.

This site is fantastic. Fantastic photos. I certainly will here a long time.

Hello, I'm new here, I always wanted to post my pictures on a great site like this one, but I'm so afraid that it won't be accepted :( , I have no professional camera,and it bugs me,because perfect pictures asks for perfect camera(well at least close to perfection), but I try to take good photos with my current camera SONY DSC-H2..:P...oh and about macro photography, I think it's perfect for shooting little things/beings , observing their own universe :)

I never had a macro shot and don't have too much iknowledge about macro photography
but what i see in this site about macro photography is amazing, unbelievable image quality!

Example? Here it is: http://1x.com/photos/macro/29626/

I don't see anything that could be called extraordinary (un-photoshopped) macros here that can't be commonly seen at any number of other sites. It used to be there was the extraordinary. I wonder what happened? Any ideas?

Well, I feel like a kid who just found out that Santa Claus isn't real..... :(

I am a mad lover of macro photography and have been blazing away with my camera almost every day on my own for over a year now, teaching myself, learning much and getting about 1 out of about 20-30 shots being a "booya!" moment. Then I find this website and I'm like a kid in a candy store. I spent the entire day yesterday going through the entire Macro gallery (which is huge!!) and seeing some of the most fantastic pictures I've ever seen. Yes, the bug shots get a bit tiresome after awhile but because I'm out there in the dirt attempting to get those shots myself, I have much appreciation for what it took to achieve the shot...

That is....

Until I come to this forum and find out that macro photography here isn't really macro photography.....it's mixed media.

Helicon, Photoshop, stacking to get consistent DOF..... HUH????????????

There ought to be two macro forums here. One for mixed media and one for organic macro.

If this website is only going to accept pictures that have been tweaked and manipulated by computer programs to the point that no physical camera could EVER achieve such results on it's own.....then most of us macro-lovers are SOL.

Call me an out of touch purist....I don't mind. But I'll bet my collection of macro lens's that I am not alone in feeling this way.

Though being something of a purist myself I have to say, that it's simply not true, what you are stating above. Just look at the recenly published macro's - a lot of them are IMO what you call 'organic macros', but they are more than a pure depiction, they also have interesting perspectives, story and impact. And that's what it's all about here, regardless of if it's 'organic macro' or 'mixed media'.

Lars :-)

Non of my macro shots are made that way, they are all single exposures and not much PS :-)

/Wulff

I appreciate the responses (so fast!). I admit, I've been a solo learner this past 1 1/2 years and so it's a bit of a shock to realize there's so much more going on with these images than what I realized. I am also a pencil portrait artist (www.theartisticpencil.com) and I feel like a bit of a hypocrite with my above comment because I do use photoshop to develop my line drawings before I actually draw the picture. (to get accurate proportions). If I was truly a purist in that sense, I would be using grids and measuring techniques that the old master's used but I do not. So I apologize for my er um... intense post.... :)

I checked out the Helicon program and found that CS4 has a similar program to do stacking and I may just play with that at some point with my photography. Someone posted a link to a blog ( Alex Wild's) and I really agree with his philosophy that in the end, it really doesn't matter HOW one gets the shot, it's how the end result looks and feels that matters. How one gets there is simply a matter of personal preference.

I guess I was just so excited to find a website like this where I could try posting my images (have not yet ever done that) and felt very defeated that most seemed to be the "mixed media" type and my stuff could not compare to that. I immersed myself in this site for an entire day yesterday and feel like I fell down the rabbit hole with all of the new information I knew nothing about and got overwhelmed. On the flip side, I've also found wonderful links to other websites as well as very valuable tips and ideas from others who post here.

Anyway, I hope I didn't start off on the wrong foot here with my "both barrels blazing" first post!!

Jodie, I think that quite a number of the photos in the macro category here are single shots, processed pretty much normally. Stacking to get sharp throughout macros has been done for quite a while (I don't do it because I'm not interested in sharp throughout). But ... for all I know it is an accepted technique to make sharp macro photos. Most extra-super sharp throughout macro shots tend to be rather "macro documentary", and often don't make it here at 1X where we go more for the artistic interpretations.

Think of stacking as similar to landscapes where you shoot 3, 5, or more takes of the same scene, at various lights, to get depth of field throughout the picture (sky, water, earth). I don't do that either, but it is an accepted photographic technique, and the resulting pictures are very much valid pictures, photos. In other words, using stacking is not mixed media.

macro is not only great sharpenning and f/16 dof or stacking..I prefer very short dof with a work on light and bokeh,but all the styles are interesting..
EJ.