This technique calls for you to choose a fast enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake, while choosing the smallest possible f-stop to maximize depth of field. Then you set the lens focus point to an approximate mid-point distance representing how far away you think your subject might be. Thanks to the depth of field created from the small lens opening, you’ll have a zone both before and behind your focusing point that will be in acceptably sharp focus. I use zone focusing a lot at parties, proms, and other get-togethers where a lot of people are interacting. Because I’m usually employed to get candid shots, I don’t want to tip off my subjects that I’m about to take their photo. Instead, I set my camera up with a fairly wide-angle lens, choose an aperture around f8, and pre-focus my camera to a distance of about five feet so that everything from three feet to 10 feet is in focus. As I walk around, I just point my camera and trip the shutter. This system works much faster than hoping my camera’s auto-focus system can acquire a subject and lock focus before people realize I’m trying to take their picture. Selective focus is a popular technique for portrait photography and it revolves around minimizing depth of field in order to focus the eye on a specific subject.

Several factors are involved in making selective focus work properly:

1. Pick a longer focal length. Some lenses have more inherent depth of field than others. Longer lenses, such as telephotos, have much less inherent depth of field than wide-angle lenses.

2. Set your aperture to its widest possible opening to reduce depth of field.

3. Focus as tightly as you can while still creating an effective composition. The closer your focusing distance, the shorter the area of sharp focus, which maximizes the selective focus effect.

Lenses have sweet spots. For most camera lenses, the sweet spot is two f-stops past the maximum aperture. Although it’s not a hard and fast rule to try and hit this particular aperture, it’s useful to have a reason for deviating from it.

Getting up close to your subject can open up a whole new world of photography. Although true macro photography involves photographing very small objects from one-third of their true size to life size, close-up photography isn’t quite so far reaching. Many cameras and lenses offer a close-focusing capability rather than true macro, even though they may be called macro lenses. (Oh gee, a manufacturer stretched the truth a little about their product—what a surprise!). This close-focusing capability is still valuable, even if it isn’t a true macro. Photographers encounter many opportunities to create tight compositions, such as the ones listed here:

Scrapbook items: You have many opportunities during a vacation or family event to capture perfect scrapbook details. During a cruise I took with my wife, we received plates of goodies (chocolates, canapes, pate) every afternoon as gifts from the staff, and we’d photograph each plate and its accompanying card. You can also get close-ups of interesting details unique to the environment you’re in. For example, if you’re on a ship or a train, close-ups of fixtures or machinery can provide interesting details to go with overall views. You can also record such things as place settings or decorations at weddings and birthday parties. Heirloom jewelry and other objects are often displayed at family reunions and these also make good subjects for this kind of photography.

Signs and markers: You can use your camera to record the signs and markers that denote historical sights. It’s a cheap and easy way to get such information and you can use such images later on as a title slide in a multimedia presentation or a cover image for a photo album about your trip. This also makes your camera a handy note-taking device! For best results, make sure to level your camera on the same plane as the sign to keep the entire sign in focus.

Interesting flowers and plants: Interesting flora is quite often all around you. These plants can be too delicate to move (not to mention that it is often considered unethical or illegal to take the plant with you) so photograph them instead. Try using a reflector or diffuser to improve lighting when shooting plants, otherwise it’s easy to end up with blown out highlights (pure white spots where there should be some detail) or blocked up shadows (too dark shadow areas).

Family events: There are many things at family get-togethers you can shoot close up. Photograph place settings and floral arrays at weddings. Take close-ups of party invitations. If circumstances permit, shoot the bride’s bouquet or ring bearer’s pillow. If you’re at a birthday party, close ups of the writing on the cake, shots of the wrapped presents, or photos of the festive decorations always make for nice pictures. I tried to create a tight composition to show the folds and texture of the holiday bow and the snow. I also tried to shoot at the same level as the bow instead of pointing the camera down from a standing position.

People: Create a unique portrait by getting in close and showing someone’s face. Photographers have a saying: “Ears don’t show emotion!” Although this doesn’t work for every portrait (it can be very unflattering if you’re not careful) sometimes, it can make for a revealing or charming image. This works well with children and can produce wonderful images with the rich life-experienced faces of the elderly, but tends to be brutally honest with those of us who have middle-aged faces.

You have a number of tools at your disposal that enable you to get close to your subjects. These choices include the following:

Built-in close focusing capability: Most point-and-shoot digital cameras offer some sort of close focusing mode. Because these cameras use a rangefinder design, which means that you look through a separate viewfinder aimed in the same direction as the lens, most of these cameras will switch to viewing through their LCD finder for close-up work to provide a more accurate composition. You can get very good results with such arrangements. Keep in mind that you have very little depth of field working in your favor when you’re doing close-up work. If your body sways back and forth as you focus the camera, there’s a good chance your subject will drift in and out of focus. If you have a tripod, this is a good time to use it.

Close-up lenses: These small lenses attach to the front of the built-in camera lens and help magnify an image. Close-up lenses are available either as screw-in adapters (which screw into your lens) or in a rectangular format that slides into an adapter mount, manufactured by companies such as Cokin. These lenses, or diopters as they’re also known, frequently come in sets of three. Each diopter has its own designation: +1, +2, +3, and so on. You can use diopters singly, or you can combine them for even more magnification. (If you combine diopters, put the strongest one on first.) These can be the least expensive and easiest choice for point-and-shoot camera owners if the camera’s close-focusing capability isn’t enough. If you can get almost, but not quite, close enough to your subject, and generally shoot at less than your camera’s highest resolution, set the camera to a higher resolution, take the shot, and crop the image to fill the frame. Or, if you’re already at your camera’s highest resolution, consider re-sampling the image in Photoshop.

Extension tubes (interchangeable lens SLR cameras only): Extension tubes mount between your camera and lens and extend the lens away from the film plane or sensor. This changes the lens’s focusing characteristics, allowing you to get closer to your subject while still achieving sharp focus. You lose the capability to focus at the far end of the lens’s focusing distance, but only while using the extension tube, not permanently. The extension tube also blocks some light, slowing down your shutter speed or requiring a larger aperture. Because you’re not adding any glass or resin (as you would with a filter), image quality doesn’t suffer.

Tele-converters: A tele-converter’s main purposes are to multiply the lens’s focal length and to increase its telephoto capability. The tele-converter places another piece of glass (usually multiple elements) between the lens and camera sensor, which magnifies the image without increasing the lens’s closest focusing distance. Say, you place a 2x tele-converter on a 200mm telephoto lens capable of focusing to a distance of eight feet. With the tele-converter, your 200mm lens becomes a 400mm lens but can still focus to eight feet, doubling the size of your subject in the viewfinder. On the down side, tele-converters cost you light. A 2x tele-converter will cost you two full f-stops of exposure. To counteract the loss of light, you can shoot with a slower shutter speed, open up the lens a couple of f-stops, or add some extra light.

Macro photography lets you enter a fascinating new world. Here you can document a wildlife kingdom as varied and interesting as our own. Macro photography also gives you the chance to find the beauty in flowers and all sorts of manmade and natural objects. The passports into this tiny world are the macro-capable lens and the tripod. You can make any lens macro-capable with one or more of the tools, such as extension tubes or diopters, described in the preceding bullet list. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of a good tripod for macro photography. Your depth of field is so shallow in macro photography that any slight body movement will drift your subject in and out of focus. In fact, one popular macro photography accessory is a focusing rail, a device that moves the camera back and forth with very fine control because it’s easier to move the camera into focus than the lens for this type of photography. Developing an interest in macro photography also helps you deal with the occasional frustration many photographers feel, namely, “There’s nothing to photograph around here!” You may live in the most boring neighborhood in the country, but at your feet is a tiny environment as strange and exotic as any you could ever hope to visit. These miniature kingdoms feature all sorts of neat stuff:

Insects: These tiny creatures have long been the stuff of horror and science fiction movies, but why should Hollywood have all the fun? The most challenging part of photographing insects is catching them when they’re still enough to photograph, but patience and determination works. Spiders are particularly good subjects because they tend to stay fairly still. Spider webs covered with early morning dew can make for attractive images too, particularly if you experiment with back lighting (putting the sun behind the web) and side lighting, which helps bring out detail. I suppose there’s even a potential series on squished bugs, but I’m certainly not recommending that as a theme.

Flowers: Close-up photography shows the beauty of the entire flower, but you can take more unique shots by diving deeper into the plant. Macro images of the pistil and stamen—or other individual parts of the flower—can lead to an almost abstract image (think Georgia O’Keefe). Backlit flower petals also provide a soft, ethereal splash of color.

Textures: Look for patterns and textures in the sand or soil. Small rock or pebble formations creatively can form an otherworldly landscape.

Moving water: It doesn’t matter if it’s a rapid on the Colorado River or the tiny current of a garden hose trickling across your lawn, water follows the same laws of physics while it moves.

Creating your own tiny riverscapes with the help of a garden hose, some rocks, and your imagination is a great way to practice slow shutter speed moving water photography. One of the main challenges in macro photography is coming up with enough light to allow the small f-stops necessary to produce a decent amount of depth of field. While setting up the camera on a tripod and using a long exposure works quite nicely for moving water shots, and does just fine for static miniature landscapes, it doesn’t do the trick for living creatures or delicate subjects if any kind of breeze occurs. The answer is supplemental lighting, which can be found in many forms.

Accessory flash: Portable daylight. These flash units can illuminate a macro subject, but not very well. Good ones tilt down and aim the light at the subject.

Off-camera flash: Functions just like accessory flash, but this time you use an off-camera flash adapter (a special adapter your camera maker offers to allow the flash to communicate with the camera while it’s used off camera) to position the light close to and directly toward the subject. The most important advantage of off-camera flash is that the light becomes more effective the closer you move the flash to your subject. This technique also lets you vary the direction the light comes from, something that can help bring out detail if you aim the light properly.

Off-camera flash and reflector: Now you’re getting fancy! Combine a side-angled off-camera flash with a reflector pointed toward the side of your subject, and you’ve got a recipe for professional looking lighting. This combination gives you nice detail from each side and fills in any pronounced shadows. The down side is that you need to hold the flash with one hand, the reflector with another and then press the shutter release button with another. Most macro enthusiasts use an accessory arm, a device that mounts to your tripod and holds either the flash or the reflector.

Ring lights: A ring light is a small, circular pair of flash tubes that mounts on the front of your lens, and provides even, directional illumination all around your subject. If you have to handhold your camera to do your macro shots, this is the piece of gear to do it with! Ring lights provide a beautiful, even illumination. Better units even let you adjust the power ratio between flash tubes for more elegant macro lighting. Best of all, there are even versions available for point-and-shoot digital cameras. Prices for these useful gadgets range from about $100 for very low-end third-party units, to as much as $500 for pro systems by Canon or Nikon. If you’re serious about macro photography, ring lights are worth the investment.