Macro Magic – Photos of a Miniature World That Blow People Away

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Lately, with lockdown and people staying close to home, the hobby of macro photography is something that a lot of us photographers have started delving into a lot more and that is how I came across “Macro Magic.” I have personally been photographing a lot of jumping spiders in my backyard, and if you follow the Light Stalking forums you will see a few others doing similar things.

shallow focus photo of wasp
Photo by Hamish Secrett

Now, macro photography does not necessarily need to be expensive and there is certainly no need to run out and buy expensive new gear (reversing your lens is a great intro to the genre and it is free or you can get a reversing ring adaptor from as cheap as $5 online).

What you will find though, is that good macro photography is one of the most difficult genres of photography to master. You’re often working with extremely narrow depths of field and lighting can be a serious issue. It requires you to consider several concurrent photographic problems at once, and that is before you have even come to grips with your subject matter (if you’re photographing bugs, you will find getting them to pose cooperatively is a real problem for example!).

Now any one of the problems you face has its solutions. The larger problem becomes having a whole macro marco shooting system that you can use repeatedly to get reasonable (or hopefully awesome) shots with some regularity.

Like many photography genres, once you have that system, you can start delving into the interesting parts of being creative as a photographer. But you need to get to that point first. The confidence to shoot an acceptable shot regularly.

That is where Macro Magic comes in.

macro shot photo of bee on flower
Photo by Jacek Dylag

This course dives deep on many of the fundamental issues you will almost certainly come up against in macro photography. For example:

  • Camera Settings – with many obvious lighting and depth of field issues, this is more important than in most other genres of photography.
  • How to use cheap alternatives to expensive macro lenses – this does not need to be an expensive hobby, contrary to popular belief.
  • How to capture more colour and texture with grunge backgrounds – you will find that backgrounds are a huge part of making macro images pop and this course has this part sewed up.
  • The do’s and don’ts of aperture and focus – a massive issue with macro that the course nails.
  • The only lighting setups you’ll ever need and how to make them easy to use – again, lighting is key to great macro shots and also one of the most difficult things. This course gives you what you need to know.
closeup photo of purple petaled flowers
Photo by Mister Starman

Perhaps one of the bonuses is key to the value here – “”Photo Stacking in Photoshop” is a skill that you will want to have as a macro photographer. This can be one of the keys to tac sharp macro shots with a much deeper depth of field than you can get with any camera. Basically it shows you how to combine several images with different focal planes into a single image. Difficult to understate how important this skill is in modern macro photography and probably worth it for this alone.

So, if you have ever wanted to photographically explore the miniature world of bugs, flowers or anything else small, then Macro Magic is a system by Josh at Expert Photography that you may indeed want to take a look at. If you have ever wanted to master a genre of photography that blows people away when they see your images, then you may also want to take a look at this very useful course that has a serious discount for Cyber Weekend.

Take a look at Macro Magic here at over ⅔ off.


About Author

Rob is the founder of Light Stalking. His love for photography started as a child with a Kodak Instamatic and pushed him into building this fantastic place all these years later, and you can get to know him better here.
Rob's Gear
Camera: Nikon D810
Lenses: Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

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