This week, it was the turn of the Competitions Secretary at the Isle of Man Photographic Society, Jeremy Broome-Smith, to present to the membership on the topic of ’macro-photography’ - the production of very close-up images at life-size or bigger of small or tiny objects such as insects, a grain of rice, the tip of a nail, or coins.

The particular difficulty photographically is the extremely small depth of field possible with a lens when taking an image at close range, often requiring a technique known as ’stacking’ - the taking of multiple images in a series of layers, and then merging the ’in focus’ elements in each image to produce the final image.

Jeremy explained that macro work was a particular passion of his - and demonstrated this with great enthusiasm and expertise, showing a variety of wonderful images to illustrate his talk, in particular of insects such as a scorpion fly and a weevil - which in close-up, have sometimes a quite surreal appearance and yet a great beauty and with superb colours.

The presentation was enlivened with a comprehensive explanation and demonstration of the specialist equipment required for such high-quality work - and whilst apparent that the very best could sometimes require some quite expensive kit such as lenses, focusing rails and lighting, excellent images could also be produced from a more modest outlay and with a patient approach.

Jeremy finished his presentation with the stacking of a series of images of a watch - only small parts of each being in focus - but when merged in Photoshop produced a stunning final image full of detail.

It was very obvious that our membership was enthralled with the presentation - macro-work clearly being a genre of photography that few of us had previously explored and yet which is all around us.

Club president Chris Blyth gave the vote of thanks for what had been a real ’tour de force’ with a very well-prepared and well-presented talk.

The society meets at the Art Society Building (Thie Ellyn) in Withington Road, Douglas, with all meetings starting at 7:30pm.

Our next meeting, on Wednesday, February 7, will include the judging of an assignment competition including both prints and digitally projected images.

Meetings are open to the public, and all will be given a very warm welcome.

Full details of our programme can be found on our website at www.iomps.com.

Chris Blyth