MarcosRodriguez is a Photographer from Spain and has been on deviantART for over 5 years. His work focuses mainly on the Macro Photography Galleries and as well as being a keen Macro Photographer himself Marcos works hard on deviantART to feature other Macro Artists. He is the author of the Macro Spotlight which has reached it's 100th issue this year!
1)Tell us a bit about yourself and how you find yourself undertaking Photography...
My name is Marcos Rodríguez, I come from the northwest of Spain, I live in the magical and beautiful Galicia. I started taking pictures as a hobby, as many of other deviants...when I got my first point and shoot camera for Christmas. That camera has shot more than 15000 pictures, and still it's my only hobby apart from deviantART of course. My interest for Macro photography started when I joined this site almost six years ago, I was amazed by those pictures that showed us common things that we usually don't pay attention to, from another fantastic point of view.
2) Could you tell us a bit about your style as a Photographer and what led you to undertaking Macro Photography in particular?
Now I'm on a kind of break from photography, I got stuck some months ago, without ideas or inspiration, but it seems it slowly came back. I'm not sure I have a defined style yet, for macro I like my pictures to have a sharp and focused subject and a small DOF. I sometimes crop my pictures into a square and I like saturated colors instead of soft tones. Why do I like Macro Photography? Well, mainly because it allowed me to learn a lot of photography, because it forces you to shoot in manual mode, and that's the best way to understand for example what the f number is and how it affects your pictures or how to bounce and modify your flash to achieve the light you need... everything helped me to learn a bit of general Photography.
3) What equipment do you use in particular to capture Macro Photography and what would you recommend to somebody starting out?
Camera body - D600 and D3000 Lens - for Macro photography I have a Tamron 90 mm f2.8. I also use a Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 and a Nikkor 50mm 1.8.Tripod - Not yetFilters - Just a UV filterFlash - I use a Sigma EF-610 DG STCamera bag - Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW, I also have the Deviantart camera bag! But my D600 with the 24-70 doesn't fit on it.I sometimes use a DIY flash modifier made with an orange juice package with a bag of some kind of cloth as a diffuser. If someone would like to attempt Macro Photography, I would recomend them to start with a simple technique: the reversed lens. Any DSLR with a kit lens mounted reversed against the camera body is automatically a Macro camera.
4) What are the challenges of undertaking Macro Photography?
The biggest challenge for me is finding interesting subjects to take pictures, and to transmit to the viewer that "something" an image must have. Macro sometimes is full of cliche pictures, but it's a kind of photography that lets you be as original as your imagination wants. It's also challenging getting close to a wasp or any kind of dangerous bugs that can hurt you, and also playing with water and electronic equipment is quite dangerous, Specially for your camera.
"Macro sometimes is full of cliche pictures, but it's a kind of photography that lets you be as original as your imagination wants."
Do you find there are some subjects trickier than others to capture? For example how on earth do you manage to capture such crisp images of live creatures?
Yes, I admire those photographers that get so close to small creatures, imagine yourself sitting in your yard and suddenly a massive round and shiny lens appears in front of you, centimeters away from your face... you'd be also scared!!
. So, yes I think that's pretty tricky. One of the most common creatures shot are the jumping spiders, because they are very curious and usually stare steady at your lens. Also the shots of drops splashes seem very tricky and usually you have to do a lot of pictures till you get "that shot".
6) Are there any photographers on deviantART that you believe have inspiring Macro photography works?
There are quite a few that I admire, any of the ones I've already featured in my Weekly Macro Spotlights like ColinHuttonPhoto, AlHabshi, Kara-a pqphotography, melvynyeo, BenjaminPuppel GrotesqueDarling13,.... and many, many others
7)Would you recommend any groups on deviantART that help promote Macro Photography?
There are quite a few good groups around the site: MacroPhotographers, MacrosWorld, Macro-Magic, Closeup-Photography, MarvelousMacro, Tiny-Worlds-Photo, True-Macro, Natural-Drops....
8) If you could work alongside another artist, dead or alive, Photographer or otherwise - who would it be?
Tough question... after all this time around deviantART I've made a lot of good friends which I would like to meet and to learn from!
9)Is there a piece of advice that you know now, which you didn't know when you started photography?
I think I have a lot to learn about photography yet, and that would be my advice to everyone starting in this world: read, learn from others, ask others and the most important thing, if you don't shoot you'll never get a good picture, but if you shoot 1000 pictures you'll probablyget at least one decent shot so practice is the key!!
10) Who are your influences, Photographic or otherwise?
I usually pay attention and try to learn and get inspiration from the works I find here so I must recognise that deviantART and the artists that I follow are my main influence, not only for photography, as I started out here doing crappy digital manipulations and such..
"read, learn from others, ask others and the most important thing, if you don't shoot you'll never get a good picture, but if you shoot 1000 pictures you'll probablyget at least one decent shot."
