Cyrill Harnischmacher - The Complete Guide to Macro and Close-Up Photography

Cyrill Harnischmacher

The Complete Guide to Macro and Close-Up Photography
Cyril Harnischmacher

Project editor: Maggie Yates
Project manager: Lisa Brazieal
Marketing: Jessica Tiernan
Copyeditor: Stephanie Pascal
Translator: David Schlesinger
Layout and type: Cyril Harnischmacher
Cover design: Helmute Krause, www.exclam.de
Indexer: Cyril Harnischmacher

ISBN: 978-1-68198-052-2
1st Edition 2016
2016 Cyril Harnischmacher
All images Cyril Harnischmacher, unless otherwise noted

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For Urte, Tabea, and Jona

In Japan, cherry blossom festivals are a centuries-long tradition that marks the beginning of spring. The flower of the cherry tree has become a symbol both for pristine beauty and for the transience of time.

These concepts are of central importance to macro photography. With the end of the cold season comes the return of life and movement to the natural world: insects take to the skies, and the first plants begin to bloom.

The quest for that perfect moment when the subject, your perspective, and the light come together in perfect harmony is what photographers live for. A camera and a lens are tools to document these fleeting moments for ourselves and for others. And with macro photography in particular, the technical details are of great concern. But even so, they are simply a means to the end of being able to capture and express your ideas in your pictures. Nevertheless, they are tools that we cant do without, and the more technical know-how you possess, the easier it will be to translate into images what moves you about noteworthy passing subjects in the natural world.

Precisely this mixture of mastery and intuition is what makes photography so exciting. The craft combines the appeal of clearing technical hurdles, the challenge of waiting for the perfect light, and the will to never to accept a compromise that results in an image inferior to your own expectations.

Despite all of the technical knowledge about the craft that I need in order to reach my photographic goals, there is one thing I never want to do without: allowing myself to be carried across a blossom-strewn meadow through a sea of subjects while shooting on instinctnot searching for the perfect moment, but allowing the moment to absorb me completely.

Cyrill Harnischmacher

2016

Most of you will know the science fiction novel Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. I cherished it when I was a child and dreamed of undertaking similar adventures of my own to come face to face with strange animals and to discover objects that people didnt even know existed. Instead of climbing into the crater of the island volcano Snfellsjkull as the heroes in the book did, however, I eventually picked up a camera and a macro lens to explore hidden worlds in more familiar environs. Macro and close-up photography enable us to discover things that escape our normal powers of perception. We can see parallels to the larger world we inhabit in the smaller and tiniest details around us.

An illustration of a colossal mushroom forest for Jules Vernes novel Journey to the Center of the Earth by the French artist douard Riou
Image: Public domain

The discoveries made while researching the world of the miniscule have hadand continue to havean influence on our lives that is hard to overstate. Many of the structures around us simply would not exist without being able to see what microscopes and macro photography can make visible. The natural world is the inspiration for a vast number of human architectural and engineering feats.