Florida's West Coast Gets Its Close-up

Doug Sahlin and Roxanne Evans use the Tamron SP 90mm and SP 180mm macro lenses to capture macro marvels.

Article By Jennifer Gidman

Images by Doug Sahlin and Roxanne Evans

Picture-Perfect Portraits

The 90mm serves as an ideal portrait lens that you can use to make your subject shine. When shooting wide open at F/2.8, your subject is isolated from the background. "The 90mm especially stands out for wedding photography," Sahlin says. "You can get those beautiful portraits of the bride, then get in close to create images of the couple's hands with their rings or the flowers on the tables."

For a series of portraits he shot of a young lady, Sahlin composed the shot to draw the viewer's eye to her face. "When you're shooting a portrait, the eyes are the windows to the soul," he says. "So in one shot I created of her, while I normally wouldn't put a face right in the middle of a picture, the curve of her back and her arms draped over one leg work as compositional elements that draw you right to her face."

In a second portrait of the same girl, Sahlin used the 90mm to draw even more subtle attention to the eyes. "Roxanne was holding a reflector underneath the girl to bounce some light into the shadows, which is why there's that nice golden hue to it," he says. "One eye is in focus, and the other one's just starting to fall out of focus. I always make sure the eye closest to the camera is the one in focus."

For Evans, using the 90mm is a boon to her pet photography, including images of their kitty, Micah. "I do a lot of pet portraits, and the 90mm helps me because it's so lightweight," she explains. "A lot of times I'm shooting one-handed with a flash on the camera so I can hold a feather or something else to get the cat's attention. I can actually pull that off with the 90mm because it's so light."

A stone statue at the Ringling Museum allowed Evans to show off the focusing power of the 90mm. "I shot that statue at F/8, and I love the way it blurs out the background so you get this wonderful bokeh," she says. "You lose everything except what's important, which is the statue's face."

Flowers, Bugs, and Other Macro Creatures

The 90mm's light weight also assists Sahlin when he's shooting in the botanical gardens. "Places like that frown on you carrying a lot of gear, so if we go in with a big camera bag, we get the hairy eyeball," he laughs. "They won't let you into sites like the hothouse with a tripod, so we usually leave that piece of gear at home. Wind isn't an issue in the hothouse, but if it's windy outside, you can get by without a tripod by simply holding your camera with one hand and holding the stem of the flower steady with the other. Then you can achieve focus and get your shot."

Sahlin also gives a thumbs-up to the 90mm's transition between full and limited focus. "When you're shooting flowers and getting up close, you put the lens on limited and the lens isn't searching from minimum focus to infinity, because it's only trying to achieve focus in a limited range," he says. "It's a lot easier to achieve focus quickly because of that."

Evans, who used the 180mm for many of her garden images, shot them with flash and bumped up her ISO to 200 to get a faster shutter speed and to compensate for the motion from the warm Florida breeze. "Unfortunately, the gardens don't open at the 'golden hour' - they usually open around 10 a.m. and close before sunset," she says. "So I have to shoot with flash, often going to +1 on the flash and dialing the exposure compensation to -1. This causes the background to be underexposed and richly saturated, but the flash evens things out and causes the flower to be perfectly exposed."

Sahlin and Evans also take along mini-reflectors and diffusers for their macro work. "It's nice when you're shooting macro to be able to cut the harsh sun or, if you're in shade, to get a little light in there," Evans explains. "Sometimes you don't want to use a flash or can't use a flash, so these are real easy to just clip to your bag and go." Sahlin adds, "With that 90mm lens, I can hold the camera with one hand and a diffuser with the other until the harsh light from the sun disappears."

Both Sahlin and Evans have had what they call "happy accidents" while shooting plant life. "I was shooting a fern wide open at F/2.8 with the 90mm because I wanted the background to blur out," says Sahlin. "The fly just happened to pop down, and I took a couple of shots with him on the fern. If you look at it really close up, the back of the fly is just starting to go a little out of focus but the wings are in focus. Plus there's enough contrast with the fly's coloration that it really sticks out."

Evans' accidental image took place while she was shooting a cactus with the 180mm. "Suddenly I saw this prehistoric-looking lizard," she says. "I was afraid he was going to leave, so I quickly shot him without changing anything up. I shot it at F/8. I love the 180 for that: You can stand back and not get in your subject's space or spook them."

Sahlin concurs on the 180's reach. "There are a lot of things you wouldn't want to get close to, like a big bumblebee lighting down on a flower, especially if you get allergic reactions like Roxanne does," he explains. "That 180mm gives you breathing room when you're shooting stuff that could be potentially be hazardous, like a spider or a bee."

If you do get a chance to shoot an insect or other creature, Sahlin recommends shooting in continuous drive mode. "Press the shutter down as long as the insect will stay there and you'll get several different shots," he says. "The lens may have to hunt a little bit for focus if the bug moves, but you're going to get more interesting images."

Artistic Endeavors

Sahlin and Evans also use both the macro lenses for more artistic projects. In a nearby historic boatyard, Evans used the 90mm to show off three bolts in detail against the wood on the dock. "I shot this wide open at F/2.8 because I wanted that one area in detail so the rest of the composition could flow right into that as my main focus," she says.

Sahlin captured images of some old Kodachrome movie film that his mom shot in the '40s or '50s before he was born. "It was one of those rainy-day photographs when we were looking for something to shoot but couldn't go outside," he says. "I put the film up against a burlap cloth and shot it with the 90mm at F/25 for 5 seconds with my camera on a tripod. If I had shot that wide open, the first bit of film would have been in focus and the rest of it wouldn't have been. We actually zoomed in close enough so that you can make out the details in one of the frames. I think it was someplace up in New Hampshire in the mountains - I can remember my mom showing these movies on an ancient projector when I was a kid."

To see more of Doug Sahlin's or Roxanne Evans' images, go to http://www.dougplusrox.com.