Photographing Outside the Comfort Zone With Macro

Cheyenne L. Rouse expands her creative abilities with the Tamron SP 90mm VC Macro lens.

Article by Jenn Gidman

Images by Cheyenne Rouse

Cheyenne recently started exploring macro photography with the Tamron SP 90mm VC Macro lens to get her own creative juices flowing. "Even though I make my living with my camera, I still need some kind of outlet," she explains. "I'm usually just using my Tamron SP 10-24 wide-angle lens and longer SP 70-200mm VC lens. I started to take the 90mm Macro out as an escape from the office. It's got so many applications: I can shoot close up and capture really great detail, or I can get more artsy with abstracts. I love the controlled precision I can get with the 90mm and that I can control the light. It makes me slow down a lot more and see things in a different way."

People who view Cheyenne's macro images often think she photographs in a studio. "People get intimidated when they see shots like this and think you need a studio, but you don't," she says. "You just have to be creative, inventive, and resourceful and look for the best light in your house. It's surprisingly and ridiculously simple how easily I set these images up: My 'studio' is the window in my home office. I set my camera up on a tripod, and I have a little wooden bench I place under the window. The window faces west, so I get a nice, shadowed light that reflects in different ways at different times of the day."

Cheyenne uses a silver reflector to help her capture the natural look she's after. "I'm an outdoor shooter and don't have to direct light that much," she says. "By using the reflector to bounce light onto whatever item I'm photographing, it reflects the light back onto my subject in a natural way, not like a spotlight is shining on it. I simply put my camera in Live View and move the reflector around until my subject looks the most natural. This also helps prevent those orange or blue tones you can sometimes get when shooting indoors. The silver reflector makes sure I get the whitest, crispest light on the food so it looks appetizing."

Keeping her backgrounds similarly simple is one of Cheyenne's photographic goals. "I want to concentrate on my subject, and the 90mm helps me do that," she says. "I'm able to blur out the background so nicely and really isolate what I'm shooting. Often it's just a wall in the background, or sometimes I'll put a piece of white foamcore behind my subject. When I photographed the pear, my office window was in the background. I shot at the widest aperture, and you can see the screen behind the pear and the green, which is the sun hitting the bushes outside my window. It lends the image a fresh color."

Showing her tasty subjects in an appealing way requires experimentation. "I photographed the cupcakes, for example, in all different ways (straight on, overhead, partial) until I hit on images that were the most pleasing and appetizing," Cheyenne explains. "I tried different groupings of cupcakes, but I found that one single, beautiful cupcake makes people say, 'I want to eat that right now!'" The 90mm was amazing for these shots. You can see every sugar crystal on the Valentine's Day cupcake. On a birthday cupcake I photographed, the macro lens makes the sprinkles look like tiny, colorful sponges!"

Cheyenne wanted to show a lemon she photographed in a couple of different ways. "Of course, I'm always working with the rule of thirds, which my eye does naturally without me even thinking about it," she says. "But I tried to compose the slice of lemon image, for example, to show off its arc - I wanted it to look like a setting sun. With the cut lemon, I wanted to show more of the texture and details, which the 90mm excels at capturing."

The 90mm has been an eye-opener for Cheyenne from a creative standpoint, showing her scenes that she's seen a hundred times before from a new perspective. "I'm always shooting these wide-open landscapes and not always close up," she says. "The macro allows me to do some more abstract work. For instance, I photographed a saguaro in late afternoon light because I really liked the shadows of the cactus spikes coming out to give it a little more texture. I also recently photographed agave leaves at an angle, and they turned into these out-of-focus, abstract shots that feel like paintings to me."

One of her favorite shots taken with the 90mm is her depiction of a cactus flower. "It was a windy day and I went out for a lunchtime hike," she says. "I took my camera with the 90mm macro on it because the flowers were starting to bloom. When I saw this one cactus with such beautiful flowers, I squatted down (there's so much cactus around here you don't want to actually be sitting on the ground). The afternoon sun was pretty harsh, so I blocked the light from above with one hand and a big reflector. I wanted to capture the softness and the color of the flowers, as well as the sharpness of the cactus spikes. I was also able to get the flower getting ready to bloom on the left side of the frame. I love wide, sweeping vistas of wildflowers and cactus flowers, but I had never really gotten in there to see what they look like up close. In such a small amount of space, I was able to show so much texture and contrast."

Sometimes the 90mm simply lets Cheyenne take a break from her busy day. "I was trying to distract myself from work one afternoon, so I took the lens out to play in my office," she says. "People are always giving me little toy trucks, because I'm a truck girl, and I put this little 4-inch-long Chevy truck on a cooler on top of my desk with a small piece of black velvet behind it. When I posted the image to Facebook, people thought it was a real truck!"

Cheyenne encourages all photographers to experiment with a Tamron macro lens. "Go macro, even if you think you're not a macro shooter," she says. "I initially thought, 'I don't shoot bugs, why would I want to do that?' But you can do anything with this lens. With all of my photography, I always try to show people a point of view they normally wouldn't see in everyday life, and the 90mm is a tool that allows me to do just that."

To see more of Cheyenne L. Rouse's work, go to www.ancientlightphotos.com or her Facebook page. For photo workshops, HDR classes, books, and more visit her blog at www.cheyennerouse.com.