It’s been a good while since I’ve made a post on here, but for good reason.  I’ve been bettering myself through the educational system at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.  Currently going through a thesis course to create a book on what I’m passionate about, I’m creating images for an insect portrait book.  The images have been more than satisfactory and I’m thrilled to see the book come together and can’t wait to see it finished.

Also, recently I made a new addition to my gear.  It has nothing to do with macro…JUST KIDDING!  It’s the Canon MPE-65, a dedicated macro lens that goes from 1x to 5x life size magnification, and the Canon MT-24EX, which is a great companion to the mpe-65 as it’s a duel head macro flash allowing me to dial in specific ratios of flash power from each flash head individually.  It’s quite an awesome setup and saves me the hassle of using the 100mm macro and tubes along with a heavy flash bracket.

Want to get into macro for yourself?  Grab a set of extension tubes!  I use Kenko extension tubes that allow the electronics to carry through to the lens so I can adjust my aperture.  There are no optics in the tubes so there is no degradation of the image, but with high quality close-up filters there is little degradation as well and those can be a little cheaper and less bulk to get used to at first; though the tubes are more diverse as any lens that will mount to your camera will mount to the tubes.

Without further adieu, here are some of the images I’ve been working on for this book!

Ant crawling through moss – Photo by Dan Dexter

Bee Eating Honey – photo by Dan Dexter

Damselfly covered in morning dew – Photo by Dan Dexter