Bugs, Blooms and depth of field

 I love shooting flowers and finding bugs on flowers is a bonus.  Getting these insects in focus is difficult.  I was shooting with a Nikon 105mm macro and being about 6 inches from these tiny subjects puts a major damper on depth of field.  All of these images were shot around F8 and you can see how extremely narrow depth of field is.  Most people would quickly answer that aperture controls depth of field and that is true but distance to subject has just as big of an influence when you get to these macro distances.  It is also helpful to remember that depth of field is 1/3 in front of the focus point and 2/3rds behind the focus point. 

Dogwood blooms in color and b&w

Just got in and got an email from the Library that Mapplethorpe flora : the complete flowers  has come in on Library Loan.  So in the spirit of that I thought I should post my own photos even if they might not be the caliber of Mapplethorpes' studio images.

The world is in color, you have to work at black and white.  - Andrew Maclean