This week Anne Sandler, guest host of Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #130, asks us to consider macro, micro, and close-up photography. She shares several examples and gives us some tips on the topic. You can read her entire challenge post here.
My opening photo features a gem carving that is on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Russian artist Vasily Konovalenko puts together several varieties of gems and creating sculptures from those gems that are currently the only display by the artist outside of Moscow.
The sculptures are small, displayed in glass cases, and featured in a special section of the museum. Each sculpture is finely detailed, generally of a humorous nature, and a depiction of Russian life. For this challenge, I focused on only a small part of a specific gem, in this case, the opening photo features an old man.
Another sculpture features an old woman. All of the gem carvings in the collection are amazingly detailed. That gallery on the third floor of the museum is a worthy stop.
This photo features a collection of flowers on a bougainvillea in my back yard. This time of year, there aren’t many blossoms on the plants here in my back yard in Arizona. The one exception is this plant which has several clusters of these small flowers.
My last image is an orange ripening on the tree in our back yard. It is of the valencia variety, a slower ripening but very juicy fruit. The many oranges on our tree will be ripe and ready to eat sometime in late February.
I don’t own a macro lens, so I would classify all of these images for this challenge as close-up. Thanks to Anne Sandler for a challenge that allowed me to search my archives for some close-ups in those gem photographs. I also thought about what I might choose to add to the post given that usually, I shoot wide-angle landscapes. I leave you with my usual comment that clicking on an image will give you a larger view, if your browser supports that function.
John Steiner
Flare Legend Adventures
Dear John, I could only see the first photo. My computer has been playing up a bit, so perhaps the problem is at my end.
It wasn’t your computer in this case, my friend. Something wasn’t working right in my media library when I placed the photos in the article. Fixed.
Ah, there they are. Thank you, John. Those tiny sculptures are so interesting. They must have been so difficult to make for the sculptor. That orange looks perfect. You will be looking forward to summer for more oranges, among other things.
I would have liked to base the entire post on the sculptures. I’d captured many more of them. Turned out the plexiglass coverings and auto-focus did their best to ruin most of the original images.
Next time I visit the museum, I’ll try a polarizing filter to see if that helps. 🙂
Dear John, only the first photo with the gentleman having beard is seen.
Rest of the images are blank.
Can you check it up?
Reflections of untidy mind is correct in pointing out the problem.
Thank you.
Thanks for the heads up. Something glitched out with my media library and the new block editor. Fixed.
Thank you.
All the images are lovely especially the ripened fruit
Only the first photo is displayed.
It seems something in my media library wasn’t working properly in interfacing with the block editor. Not sure what broke the links to the images in the classic block, but I relinked them and they now seem to be OK.
Thanks for the heads up.
Photos were fine for me John – glad you were able to fix the issue. Of these, the orange was my favorite – looks close enough to taste!! I know what you mean about the glass in museums, they make it terribly difficult to get a good image. You did well! Those little sculptures look amazingly detailed.
I am working on another post this morning for future publication and I am still having issues with the media archive at WordPress. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it appears to be related to my browser. If I restart the browser, it seems to settle down and play right for awhile.
WP is having all kinds of weird stuff going on lately. sigh
John, your post was well worth waiting for! The small art sculptures are amazing and so are your images of them. I can hear the old woman yelling at someone. Your orange reminded me of when I tried to do double exposures of my mandarin oranges. Thanks for joining in!
Thanks! Those sculptures are even more amazing in person!
Those carvings do have some terrific carvings. Wonderful post 😀
Thanks. I hope to visit there again and get more pics of these small works of art.
Hi, John. I love those gem carvings. Wonderful details. The artist really reveals the personality of each character in the carvings. I love that!
I would love to watch this artist work! He emigrated from Russia and is now living in the United States.