The Wild Photographer

My Quick & Dirty (but oh-so-aesthetic!) Macro Photography Technique – No Macro Lens Needed

• Episode 54

Share episode

Send us a text

Hey friends, welcome back to The Wild Photographer! Today, we’re diving into one of my favorite rabbit holes in photography—macro. And not just any macro… I’m talking about a quick and dirty (but oh-so-aesthetic) technique that lets you capture stunning macro shots without even bringing a macro lens. Yep, you heard that right.

As a biologist and entomologist turned travel photographer, I’ve always had a deep love for the miniature world—those textures, patterns, and critters that usually go unnoticed. But let’s be real: when you're packing for a trip, you can't always justify hauling a full macro setup. That’s why I’ve dialed in a portable, practical method using your everyday lenses—think 24–105mm or a basic kit lens—and I’m breaking it all down for you in this episode.

Whether it’s a dew-drenched wildflower or the intricate veins of a rainforest leaf, I’ll walk you through the physical setup, manual focus tricks, camera settings with and without flash, and the creative flair that turns good shots into great ones. I even cover editing tips to make those textures pop and that drama sing.

So if you’ve ever wanted to make small things look big (and beautiful), grab your gear—or even just your backyard—and let’s explore how to bring the tiny into focus in a bold new way.

Let’s get wild. Let’s get macro.

Court's Websites

Sponsors and Promo Codes:
LensRentals.com - WildPhotographer15 for 15% off
ShimodaDesigns.com - Whelan10 for 10% off
Arthelper.Ai - WILD for a 6 month free trial of Pro Version

AG1 - Daily (and Travel) Nutrition (use link for free travel packs and other goodies)


Court Whelan (00:00)
Hey friends, welcome back to The Wild Photographer. Today I am talking about my quick and dirty but ⁓ so aesthetic macro photography technique. It's probably no surprise if you know the fact that I'm a biologist and entomologist by training that I really do love macro photography. There are some pretty technical definitions of it with the one to one ratio stuff, but we're not gonna go into that today.

we're going to sort of go forward to finding macros, really making small things look big and aesthetic. when we are talking about this macro technique, it is a way to make small, maybe dramatic things look even more dramatic and beautiful. So we're talking about flowers, we're talking about textures of things, we're talking about insects and beetles and butterflies, you name it.

anything that is small that you would like to feature and showcase in a kind of larger than life style. This technique is me great for you. And the big thing here is that you don't need a macro lens for it. In fact, I really don't bring my macro lens and a lot of trips anymore because I have so many other lenses and so many other priorities when I'm out in the field shooting that a macro and a full setup just unfortunately doesn't make its way in. But again, this quick and dirty technique is going to be an extraordinary benefit to you if you are just bringing

one or even two lenses on a trip. This whole technique is with kind of your wide angle kit lens, your walking around lens. So we're gonna get into the details of what to look for in terms of the setting, the critter, the thing. We're gonna talk about your camera settings, the actual physical settings, as well as the camera settings as well. Some variations in style to this, as well as the editing.

But first, I'd like to thank the sponsor of our podcast today, arthelper.ai. It is an AI website by the folks at Art Helper and Art Storefronts. We photographers, if we are going to do anything with our work beyond just very basic personal posts on social media or making our own calendars or albums for ourselves, if we wish to do anything with it, sell it, promote it in larger scale, you definitely need help naming the photos, key wording the photos.

and all sorts of other things along those lines. Coming up, there's descriptions, coming up with stories around them, even doing email campaigns, very, very specialized social campaigns. Art Helper helps you construct all the promotion for that in a really ingenious, AI sort of way. So the website is art helper dot AI. For listeners of this podcast, if you use promo code wild, that's just W I L D in their checkout, you will actually get six months of their free

pro version software, or I should say it is free of their pro version of their software. So you get the whole kit and caboodle for free for six months, which is a pretty extraordinary deal. I use art helper quite often when coming up with creative posts and campaigns, emails, titles of my work, and it's just an extraordinary tool. I also am delighted to say that I have a brand new photo website.

This is not the photo tutorial website, but it is my personal work. is my portfolio. It is my best of the best from over the years. I'm adding to it all the time, but you probably haven't seen it and it is just at shop.courtwhelan.com and I definitely invite you to check it out. Of course I have things for sale on there, but really the reason I'm mentioning this is that I think one of the best things that I did as a young budding photographer is to look at other people's work.

I would imbue certain elements of their style. I would look for inspiration, places to go, things to see, ways to photograph things in different ways. So I invite you to take a look at my website shop.courtwhelan.com and tell me what you think. Last but not least, if you would like to help support this podcast, it is free, but the very, very best thing you can do is just simply leave a review. You can leave a review on the podcast platform that you're literally listening to this on. You can leave up to a five star review.

hint, wink, wink. And then a comment would be most appreciated. That helps get the word out. It helps get it in the algorithm for other folks to find this podcast and hopefully benefit from it and expand their world of nature photography. So without further ado, let's get into the episode. So macro photography, again, in the light of this episode is making small things look very big and grandiose in the frame, in the screen of your camera.

So what we're talking about here is photographing things like insects, flowers, and really anything that can ultimately be aesthetic in screen. So a way to go beyond sort of traditional macro is I actually do a lot of photography of textures, like wood grains. I find patterns in nature. might be the venation of a leaf. So I'm not actually doing a macro photo of the whole leaf or a flower. I'm just doing part of it. So again, making very small things look big is the cornerstone of my approach to macro photography.

and the cornerstone of what I'm gonna teach you today. So those are the things you're looking for, but really anything can turn into a macro photograph. So I don't wanna spend too much time on mandating the inspiration. What I really wanna spend a lot of time on is the camera settings, the lens you're gonna use, and how you do this very special kind of quick and dirty macro technique. Again, this is not using a macro lens, although if you have a macro lens, it completely fits into this episode.

If you have a whole macro set up with flash, it fits in today's episode. But this is for everyone.

anybody with a DSLR or mirrorless that has any sort of lens. can be your kit lens, your 18 to 55, your 55 to 250. It can be a zoom lens, a telephoto lens. It can be you're just walking around wide angle 24, 105. All these things are really great for this technique. So the first thing we're going to talk about are the physical settings. And I'm just going to kind of rattle these off because this is a step-by-step procedure of how to set your camera up into macro mode.

what you're going to start off by doing is with your lens, you're going to zoom all the way in. So if you have a 24 to 105, go to 105 millimeters. You want to get maximum magnification for this type of macro photography. The next thing is you're going to physically figure out what your minimum focusing distance is. Now, many of you may know your your actual minimum focusing distance. You might know it to be point eight meters or one and a half feet or whatever the lens barrel says, your camera's manual says.

But oftentimes it can be a little bit nebulous. That's a little bit confusing because what that distance is, A, I don't think many people in the audience know exactly how to position themselves 0.8 meters away from something or 0.31 meters away from something. But also that measurement is typically the distance to the sensor. So if you have a lens, for instance, that is six inches long or you have a lens that's four inches long,

you're going to have to actually take that into the equation. So rather than have you print up an Excel sheet and do the math and the calculations, there's a much easier, actually much better way. And what you're going to do is you're going to put your lens on manual focus. Okay, so switch from auto to manual, and then you're going to dial your focusing ring all the way to one side. Okay, so one side is going to be infinity for like the furthest distance of focus. The other side, which I'm talking about here, is going to be your minimum focusing distance.

So dial it all the way until it can't go any further. And then when you're in front of this thing, let's just say it's a wildflower for the sake of this example, you are going to physically be the focusing mechanism. So you yourself are going to move in towards this thing until you're looking through your viewfinder or through your LCD screen at this point, you are going to move in closer and closer to this until that thing becomes in focus. And all of a sudden that distance of you to the thing is your minimum focusing distance.

try to memorize that, try to get familiar with what that distance is. Now, oftentimes I will keep it at that and I'll start snapping photos as soon as it comes into focus, but I realize that's not always as easy as it sounds. So what I will often advise people to do is more or less memorize that distance, try to get really familiar with it, throw your camera or your lens back into autofocus, and then when you are approaching and setting up for any sort of macro shot, that's the distance you're aiming for. While zooming in,

It's going to make the thing look really, really big in your frame. So again, now you have determined your minimum focusing distance and you've zoomed all the way in. So you're maximizing your camera to blow that thing up, that wildflower up as big in your sensor as humanly possible. The next thing is you're going to dial in your camera settings. Okay, so this is going to be your aperture, your shutter speed, ISO.

we're going to break this section down into whether you have a flash or no flash. And I'll be honest, a lot of times I don't use flash. It might be because I'm photographing something I don't want to blast with a flash like a small frog or something similar. It might be because I prefer to use a flashlight for more of a soft, even lighting, or I just simply don't have a flash. A lot of the bigger fancier cameras these days do not come with a pop-up flash. So those of you with more introductory models like the Nikon

7200 or Canon Rebel series. You actually have a little bit of advantage here because that flash is going to make your macro photo better and more dramatic simply because it's going to give you a significantly better, bigger depth of field. That's kind of the essence of my macro style. And you're going to find soon enough that that big depth of field is the game changer for your macro photography.

So let's start off by talking about what to do with your camera settings when you don't have flash or you don't wish to use flash. So you're gonna go to the setting of manual, manual mode on your camera, which means you have to tell it what you want it to do as far as aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. But just like all my other wildlife photography, I'm gonna do manual plus auto ISO. So I'm not gonna actually have to worry about dialing in the ISO. Camera's gonna figure that out for me. But I do want you to dial in a very specific aperture and a very specific shutter speed.

So in this case with no flash, we probably don't have as much light as if we were blasting that wildflower with a pulse of light. So we're going to have a moderate aperture, a moderate depth of field. We're going to start off with F8 and 1 over 100 shutter speed. You do have some risks here, especially compared to the flash version. This is not a huge depth of field for macro. Remember, your depth of field is very much related to the proportion of your subject into your frame. So if you have a...

pile of coffee beans or if you have a wildflower or you have a really interesting staghorn beetle and it's taking up half of your frame and you want the whole thing in focus, you need to have a very, very wide depth of field, just as if you were photographing a huge mountain scene and you want the wildflowers in the foreground and the river in the mid-ground and the mountain in the background, you kind of have to treat that beetle or that fern or that wildflower the same way. So F8 is a good starting point, but what we want to generally do is try to ramp that up

all the way to f16 if we can handle it. Okay. So with that manual plus auto ISO mode at f8 at 100th of a shutter speed, your camera's going to give you an ISO. This is where a little bit of the creativity comes in. This is where a little bit of the strategy comes in. Depending on whether you're photographing at night, in the dead middle of the day, at dawn and dusk hours, your ISO is going to range significantly. Your camera's going to buffer for the ISO to let in the appropriate amount of light.

So you may have to increase your shutter speed or decrease your shutter speed, meaning let in more or less light depending on where that ISO is. But remember, the ultimate goal is you're going to try to get from f8 to f11 to f16 to increase that depth of field. I can't tell you on the line right now exactly what lighting will give you that depth of field, but you're going to have to play around with it. If you can, let's say your ISO starts off quite low.

100 or 200, you know you can go higher with a higher ISO and still maintain quality. So maybe increase your shutter speed if you've already gotten to f11 or f16. What that's going to do is it's going to remove or minimize any sort of hand movement in your shot. Let's be honest, whatever 100 is, is kind of a slow shutter speed for handheld. If you're at hundred millimeters or if you're using a telephoto lens, like 200 millimeters. However, I do want you to start with that and I want you to be prepared.

to go up to one over 160 or one over 200. You're going to find that you probably will not be able to get to F11 or F16, that magic deep depth of field with much over one over 200. So I don't advise really even wrapping your head around that or really trying. Your ISO is gonna be in the stratosphere and you don't want anything over 3,200. You wanna keep it as low as you can while also realizing there's a little bit of strategy here, there's a little bit of artistry here and how do you get that

deep depth of field with minimizing hand movement at a low ISO. But that's the general gist for the no flash option. Now when you inject flash in your shot, everything becomes better, to be totally honest. That burst of light going to allow you to get that deep depth of field while maintaining a low ISO. So if you have a pop-up flash, if you have a shoe-mounted flash, if you have a strong flashlight, that is going to be huge for this technique. So I do advise it.

In this case, you're going to start at f11 or f16 and 1 over 200 of a shutter speed. That's going to absolutely eliminate the hand movement, any sort of hand shake from your camera as you're taking the photo. And f11 or f16 is going to be that deep depth of field to give you a really, really cool, highly texturized, highly aesthetic image. Now, there are some risks with this technique as well. And one of the ones that I've been very sensitive to over the years, especially with a pop-up flash,

is sometimes if you get really close to an animal, your lens barrel will actually be in the way of your flash. So if you start taking these photos and notice that there's like a half moon or an arc of shadow around your subject, and you say, what in the world is that? I have a flash on it's coming from all directions. It's probably your lens barrel. So you actually may need to either get a shoe mounted flash to raise it, or you may need to abandon the pop-up flash entirely because that

top-up flash is pretty low, and that angle of light from the flash might have your lens barrel in the way. This, of course, all depends on the size of your lens barrel. So just be aware of that. The other thing to be aware of with a flash of any sort is if you're going to disturb the critter. Now, wildflowers fortunately don't get too disturbed. Intricate wood grain is not going to get disturbed. The head of a fiddlehead fern is not going to get disturbed, but a butterfly might.

a beetle might, a beautiful bee might. So just be aware that you probably don't want to do a whole lot of flashes or else that thing might fly off or scurry off. So you want to get this system dialed in. You want to practice it ahead of time. So that way when you do get one, two, three shots off, you're not risking that thing moving on before you finally dial in your system and get the settings right.

So let's talk about variations in style. Well, one of the things I'm gonna vary right off the bat is my exposure. almost always going to underexpose my shot, especially with flash. But what exposure does is it really helps darken the background. It helps create rich colors from whatever you're photographing. It could be a colorful insect. It could be a colorful wildflower. It's gonna really enrich those colors.

So that's one variation is to underexpose or maybe if you had started at underexposing try to brighten it slightly up to even like a zero exposure in the compensation wheel.

I rarely will overexpose my shot. That's probably not my tactic here. I'm not trying to blow out the highlights or anything like that. The other thing I'm gonna do with variations in style is something that I've sort of repeated throughout is a variation of depth of field. So yes, I think a deep depth of field where everything in the scene is in focus, like you just get really, really intricate details in the legs of the insect, intricate details into every little crevice of the flower or the texture of the leaf.

but sometimes you can go the exact other way and have a very shallow depth of field. This is going to be to your benefit for light, of course, so that will also allow you to dial that ISO down and or increase your shutter speed. But instead of shooting at f16, try to shoot at f2.8, try to shoot at f4. This is going to give you a slice of focus, so it's going to make a much more ethereal, artistic, shot versus the deep depth of field. And then the final thing is if I'm just...

getting really creative if I have a lot of time, I might actually try to stay in back a little bit, putting my camera back on auto focus if you haven't done so already, and I'm shooting to crop. The interesting thing here is that if you have your subject in the scene that represents, let's say only 15 or 25 % of the frame, meaning total surface area of what you're looking at through the viewfinder, that's going to allow a much deeper depth of field of your subject.

than if you were to have it as 50 or 75 % of your frame. So if you wish to have a very, very deep depth of field, but you're finding you can't quite get to F11 or F16, if you stand back a foot or two and make that subject a little bit smaller in your viewfinder, you're gonna notice that F8 all of a really does the job for you. Then you're going to crop in the computer if you wanna make that thing look as big as possible and fill the frame edge to edge.

With editing, I'm really trying to create drama in these scenes. So the things that I do look at in my post-processing are things like increasing contrast that lightens the lights and darkens the darks. I might go to the black slider and dial it down a little bit to really make an ominous dark,

rich black type photo. I might up the clarity to increase the definition. Texture goes along with this. I might increase the clarity and texture. And I might even play around with D-haze. D-haze makes these really, really dramatic mid tones. make your macro photo stand out in these big, bold, dramatic ways that I'm trying to do here.

So so this is indeed a very quick and dirty way to get great macro photos. You do not have to have a macro lens. However, you can probably quickly surmise it. If you do have a dedicated macro lens, your advantage is that you're going to get closer and make that critter that flower, whatever it might be even bigger in your frame. So your technique here actually does not change at all. It's just a better version of it.

So I often do not bring a macro lens on my trips. so therefore I'm really dialing in this procedure, this method for my 24 to 105. I'm zooming into 105. I'm going in a manual to get that minimum focusing distance. And I'm keeping my camera on manual plus auto ISO because that's pretty much what I always have it on. But with these techniques, you're going to be able to increase the body of your work. You're going to be able to see beautiful little moths that might be on a wall around your jungle lodge.

and fill the frame with them. They might be the size of a quarter, but through this technique, you're going to make them full frame shots. And so all of a sudden, all those little black and whites and yellows that might be in the wings of the moth that you can barely see with your naked eye, they're going to fill your entire computer screen. And you can do this with everything. You can do this, like I said, with with leaves and flowers and all sorts of small critters with frogs and insects, other amphibians. So there's really a long list. And I love this technique because I think it just broadens the horizons.

for all of us. So I hope you did learn something. I hope you give it a try in the field. Like I said, there is some artistry, there is some strategy involved. but you can see there's definitely a formula with these apertures and shutter speeds and of course the physical settings. So the best thing you can do since this makes really just about anything look quite beautiful is go in your backyard and practice before your next photo trip. Find some leaves with cool textures and use this technique. If you have a pop-up flash,

spend a little bit of time with and without flash. If you have a shoe mounted flash, same thing. But ultimately what you're trying to do here is make these small things look big and through these techniques, I know you're gonna nail it each and every time.


People on this episode

Head Shot

Court Whelan

Host