Macro your life! Different practical ways to use your macro lens
Macro lenses may seem a bit niche, and some might say it's difficult to find them super practical, but in reality, using a macro lens with your iPhone can yield some pretty phenomenal results — if you get a little bit creative!
Here are a few different ways you can get the most use out of your macro lens every day.
- Switch up your #foodporn perspective
- A world unseen
- Learnin' about the little things
- Makeup lovers, rejoice!
- Pests, pests, go away
Switch up your #foodporn perspective
If you've ever been on social media before (more specifically, Instagram), you'll know that it's a place for a) selfies, b) product shots of products you know the person can't actually afford, and c) mouth-watering #foodporn shots!
While #foodporn can be fun as hell to look at, it's also worth noting that people shoot the same. Gosh. Darn. Angles. Every. Single. Time. #Foodporn can get repetitive super fast, and soon it'll seem like you're scrolling through the same aerial shot of a pizza or the same smoothie bowl over and over again.
Macro lenses are phenomenal because they allow people to switch up their perspective and get up close and personal with their food, capturing tiny details other people otherwise wouldn't.
Sure, those muscles you ordered from that Italian restaurant looked great from afar, but what about the bright flashes of green from the parsley up close? The glisten of the white wine, wet on its smooth, kaleidoscope shell? The potential slo-mo of the freshly baked bread sopping up the leftover broth? The intimate small details? The rich flavors?
Pull out your macro lens and change up your perspective!
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A world unseen
Have you ever seen the movie Ant Man? Paul Rudd has these epic, tear-down battles on a micro level, but from a distance it just looks like tiny plastic toy cars bumping into microscopic bugs. From a distance, it looks lame, but up close, it's… kind of super amazing.
Your macro lens is a key to the tiny, beautiful, unseen version of our world. With it, you can make broken car window glass look like shattered stained glass, dead bugs look like high-def Vogue accessories, and a rusty nail in the side of a building into a towering, rusty enigma.
Just because something looks lame and not super appealing from a distance doesn't mean that it won't look incredibly neat and breathtaking up close with your macro lens.
Learnin' about the little things
If you've ever spent more than 5 minutes with a kid under the age of 10, you'll know how curious, attention-lacking, and hands-on they can be. Plus, it's hard to keep things fun while still being relatively educational, which makes walking that tightrope kiiiiinda tricky.
With a simple macro lens, you can turn playtime into learning time, and you don't even really need any toys to do it!
Simply get your little one to pick out their favorite stuffed animal and start playing. When they're sick of their stuffed bestie and are ready to move on, whip out the macro lens and get up close and personal. You can tell your tiny tot about all the fibers it took to make teddy, what teddy is made out of, how teddy was put together, and so much more!
Pull the macro lens out when you're on a walk and take a peek at the flowers and bugs at the park. Use the macro to enhance small text to sound out a word for the child. Play with the macro at dinner to show the different ingredients of a meal – the educational possibilities are endless if you step outside your comfort zone and get creative.
Makeup lovers, rejoice!
Are you a beauty blogger? Obsessed with all things makeup? Looking to take the perfect shot of your lip or nail art but can't seem to capture all those vivid hyper-details? About to throw your DSLR camera out the dang window?
Well then, I have to ask: Have you ever used a macro lens to shoot your makeup looks before?
While the last thing people probably think of when they hear the word makeup is "LET'S GET AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE!!!!!", macro lenses allow professional makeup artists and people working at the core of the beauty industry to show off their intricate art across social media.
If you're thinking, "Well, why the heck would you need to get so close?", keep in mind that some artists will paint cityscapes, flowers, and even entire scenes from movies on their lips to showcase their skill and that some of the detail is nearly impossible to capture on a regular camera.
The big trick for taking makeup photos with a macro lens is to find a lens that isn't as powerful or magnified as some of the ones offered. You want to see the lip art, not all the lines, creases, and cracks in the lips.
Pests, pests, go away
Hopefully not everyone will have to deal with an infestation of a creepy-crawlies in their lifetime, but if you're one of the lucky ones who's been stuck with cockroaches, bedbugs, spiders, ants, or anything in between, you'll know how difficult it can be to identify the type of bug and get it the hell out of your apartment.
Luckily for you, macro lenses make it incredibly easy to snap a picture of these little guys so you can shoot them off to your exterminator for proper identification (and then, hopefully, termination).
In the same vein, you can also use the macro lens to showcase any bugs found in your food across social media. You know what I mean – you've seen those viral videos of people who've found worms or maggots in their pasta or soup and then try to snap a photo but it's super blurry, so you're all like, "... Is this legit? I can't tell… It just looks like a blurry piece of rice…"
How do you macro?
Is there a way you love to use your macro lens? Let us know how you take your creative shots in the comments below!
Cella writes for iMore on social and photography. She's a true crime enthusiast, bestselling horror author, lipstick collector, buzzkill, and Sicilian. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @hellorousseau