A few weeks ago, I went on a nature walk with a couple of film pals to practice macro photography with small bits of moss and fungi in mind (followers of the blog might recall this post from February detailing the inspiration found in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss).
I’m still learning the macro capabilities of my current lenses and how to make the best of them. The window of focus in macro photography is very limited; you have to be a very specific distance from your subject, and finding enough light and the right aperture is tricky. But it’s all part of the game, discovering new pieces of your craft and figuring out over time how to achieve them.
My nature walk friends and I talked about how lucky we feel to be artists with the drive to venture into the world and explore it, how interpreting our experiences through art and science adds meaning and fulfillment to our lives. I’m endlessly curious about things like what goes on in leaf litter and tidepools, about how the Sun burns, the lives of tardigrades and blue whales, the birth of the first galaxies.
Which brings me to the photos in this post. I took these pictures on the macro nature walk, but they aren’t really macro pictures. I’ll be sharing more of my macro attempts in the weeks to come, but this collection is more about the intersection of science and art, and a combination of two of my favorite studies: life on Earth and life in the cosmos.
When I shot these photos, and especially once I had the film developed, I felt like I was looking at scenes from beyond our world. Feathery algae and blooming silt remind me of Hubble images of nebulae, spiky-leafed galaxies dotted with floating sediment stars. The effect is at once telescopic and paper collage.
All images in this post were shot at Belle Isle on Kodak UltraMax 400 35mm film and a Minolta X-700. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.