Tom Vogt wasn’t looking to enter any contests while browsing the Tamron Web site a few months back: He was actually on the hunt for a new lens, which he found in the form of the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 model. But while he was making his online purchase, the architect from Fort Dodge, Iowa, noticed that Tamron was sponsoring a macro photography contest.

Just because the contest was a spur-of-the-moment entry, however, doesn’t mean Vogt is any stranger to photography. “I started messing around with photography in high school,” he explains. “In college, I took a photography course and learned how to develop my own black-and-white photos. It’s just progressed naturally from there.”

Vogt’s main emphasis for the past 20 years or so has been on sports photography. “My wife is a teacher at a local high school, and she was in charge of the yearbook at the school for a long time,” he says. “She always had trouble finding people to take high-school sports pictures, so she recruited me to help her out. I did that for quite a few years.”

Once his wife quit supervising the yearbook committee, the parents were so used to seeing Vogt out on the field that they asked him to keep taking pictures of their kids at local sporting events. “It’s become a side business I’ve built up,” he says. “It’s a way to help the parents out, and it allows me to keep getting out on the field.”

Vogt’s turn behind the viewfinder also extended to a local newspaper that tapped into him when it was short on its regular photographers. “They couldn’t really afford to pay me, so in return they’d give me press passes to different events,” he says. “This allowed me to get to some events I wouldn’t have normally been able to go to.”

The winning image of the frog was inspired during one of Vogt’s rather mundane household activities: mowing the lawn. “We had had a lot of flooding that spring in our area, and our backyard is the low point on the block—so all the water had collected in our backyard, which was underwater for a while,” he laughs. “Once the water dissipated, I decided to mow the lawn one Saturday afternoon. All of a sudden, I noticed these tiny frogs jumping out of the way of the mower—I mean, there were hundreds of them! I realized I had a photo opportunity there.”

Vogt caught one of the tiny lawn frogs and gently placed him within one of the vibrant flowers growing alongside his house. “It was in the late afternoon, so the photo was in full shade because of the late sun and the flower’s location on the east side of my house,” he recalls.

Because he didn’t have a true macro lens (“the lens I won from the contest is my first macro lens”), Vogt used a fast F/2.8 telephoto zoom lens with an extension tube on it on his Nikon D200 camera. “The extension tube allowed me to get close enough for the macro shot,” he explains. “With the extension tube on there, the f-stop wasn’t recorded, but I’m sure I probably had it closed down to f/22 to get the maximum depth-of-field. I also used a tripod because of the slow shutter speed of 1/2 a second. I was able to click off four or five shots before the little guy jumped away and headed back into the yard.”

Vogt’s 90mm prize lens has already arrived, and he’s already started putting it to good use. “I’ve used it more as a 90mm lens than as a macro lens so far, though I’ve played around with the macro and tried to get used to it—I took pictures of the Christmas decorations to familiarize myself with it, for example,” he says. “I’d like to get more into some real macro photography, maybe some insect images. My neighbor has a green thumb and grows a large variety of garden flowers—I’ve tried photographing them in the past, but it’s been hard because I didn’t have a true macro lens. Now I’ll be able to set up and try to get some really nice shots with the Tamron 90mm macro lens.”

For great instruction on macro photography, visit the special macro section on Tamron's website and watch the recently shot Macro Video featuring award-winning photographer Roy Toft.

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