This is the first of what probably (definitely) will become a series of macro posts on this blog. Not just of insects, like in this post, but also more abstract pictures.
Around two years ago I got into (macro) nature photography and I’ve been really enjoying it. I started out using a Nikon D80 with a Sigma 105mm macro lens, but last year I upgraded to the Nikon D300. When I was still using the D80, I used to handhold the camera, using my body and objects in the vicinity (trees or the ground, whatever’s there really..) to stabilize myself and the camera. After upgrading to the D300, I also purchased a Manfrotto tripod, which I used in combination with a (crappy) Phottix remote. The build of the remote is cheap as hell, but hey.. it works and that’s what counts. Using the mirror-up mode on the D300 and the remote trigger, I was astounded by the detail the camera was able to pick up! If you haven’t tried it yet, go do it now, you’ll be blown away! I’ll see if I can dig up a photo of the whole construction in action. I’ll probably dedicate a future post to that setup and the results from the trip.
But as I said, that was last year, and for this trip I decided to try something different. Running around in the woods and fields, chasing dragon- and butterflies with a 2 kg tripod, camera & lens, other additional lenses etc. was getting old really fast, so I figured: why not leave the tripod at home, and try to use the flash to freeze my subjects…
I thought the technique worked remarkably well! I was expecting the flash to give an unnatural look to the photos, but to my eye the lighting looks very natural. As an added bonus, at the end of the day my back wasn’t broken from carrying the tripod around 
Most of the photos were taken on the Hoge Veluwe (near Arnhem, link to Google Maps), only the butterfly and the damselfly with lunch (scroll down to see) were taken in Nijnsel and Oisterwijk, Noord-Brabant respectively.
I really like how the colors of the damselfly and the leaf match in the next picture.
Damselfly just caught a spider for lunch.
At the end of the day the damselflies were nowhere to be found and just before we left a blade of grass caught my eye:
Unfortunately the sun was gone and I had to crank up the ISO quite a bit to get a decent exposure, resulting in some noise.
Hope you liked a different aspect of my photography, one I’ll be dedicating more posts to in the future. As always, I’m very interested to know what you think about the photos and your own experiences with macro photography!
Note for users of color calibration devices:
I’ve recently discovered that Firefox 3.5 has changed its color management system. This new system doesn’t support ICC v4 color profiles, so if you’re using a color calibration device (e.g. Datacolor Spyder or X-Rite Eye-One Display) and Firefox 3.5, you will see my photos with different colors than intended (if your ICC profile is v4, ICC v2 profiles are still supported). Firefox 3.0 and Safari are unaffected, so until Mozilla fixes this problem, using one of those browsers is recommended for color accuracy. Also, if you don’t use any hardware calibrators and read this anyway: you just wasted 2 minutes 