These are some truly amazing photographs. You caught so many of the small details, which can hardly ever be appreciated with the naked eye. I especially enjoyed all of the action you came across, particularly the spider fights. so cool! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you. 🙂 Glad you find this macro stuff interesting. The photographs that show interesting behaviours always stand out from the rest ... and for me, are the most exciting ones to take.
Do you use a tripod when you take the photos? Any time I try to take a photo of a small insect, the camera is always shaking a bit too much and it ends up blurry. Sorry if this is a dumb question haha I had never heard of macro setting on the camera until just now reading about it.
It's not a dumb question at all. I haven't used the tripod in the last ten years or so. I used it before. Here in my area, there is almost always some kind of wind... and even if it is a gentle breeze, it shakes things too much for macro. The tripod doesn't help in those situations. That's why I use the flash most of the time, to get the high shutter speed that freezes things and allows me to shoot without a tripod. Furthermore, most interesting situations with insects and spiders involve them moving around, often pretty quickly, so the tripod wouldn't help much there either.
Sometimes I get the opportunity to shoot in ambient light, with no wind around, and with a longer exposure ... but I feel too lazy to drag the tripod around, so I put the camera on the ground or my knee and try to be still enough with steady hands ... with a bit of practice and exercise, one can get better at this .. just like shooting with a gun or something ... most pictures end up blurry, but if one or two are sharp - the mission is accomplished 🙂
Another thing ... different cameras have different stabilizer systems that make that shaking more or less present, that's another thing to consider.
I really appreciate the insight. It totally makes sense that you would take many photos that may come out blurry so that you ultimately end with a few perfect shots. I think so often we see a beautiful final shot, but forget about all of the failed attempts that may have come before it. In a way, you could say the same about life, we usually only see one side of a situation and hardly consider all that led up to it.