The Grunge Look
I have been talking in past blog posts about expanding my macro direction outside of nature a little as there are so many cool subjects to shoot in the macro world. I’ve had a place on my website for years called junkyard art, but never really promoted it to my blog followers till now. I like shooting the old antique type subjects like the rusty cars, and old ancient machinery, and anything mechanical that has lots of interesting parts that creates a nice composition. I had my Grandfathers old pocket watch and started out shooting the face of the watch but wasn’t really happy with any of the images, and then decided to open the back of the watch and check out the working parts inside. The original out of the camera image was pretty sterile looking and needed something to make it more artistic. I’ve never been a fan of the HDR illustrated look with my nature photography, but with this type of subject matter I really do like this look. I accomplished this by combining the Detail Extractor and the Tonal Contract filters in Nik Softwares Color Efex Pro 4.
I added a 25mm extension tube onto the macro lens so I could focus in this close. I’ll do some blog posts on the processing steps I take to get this grunge look on some of my latest non nature subject.
That really looks great to me and it encourages me to focus more on macro photography. I shoot mainly at horse competitions (dressage) and I really miss something that I could call creative art. You mentioned extension tubes. I think this is a really good Idea for people who want to try and make sure if they love macro. I have bought a set of three extension tubes and removed dust from my old kit lens which was standing on a shelf like in a museum and it gives me more flexibility and opportunity to test before I decide to buy a real macro lens.
Regards
Irek Klepacki
PhotoIrek
Thanks Irek, glad to inspire you to shoot more macro. Typically I don’t need the extension tubes on any of my macro lenses because I don’t shoot in this close on most subjects, but with a small pocket watch it require a little higher magnification then I could get out of my macro lens, so the tube allowed the lens to more in closer.