For those of you following me and this blog for many years now, it is a known fact that I have started macro photography very early in my younger days of photography learning. I picked up insect macro photography from the first year I bought my first DSLR, and have been practicing it very frequently ever since. I have found that shooting macro helped me significantly in my early tears of of developing as a photographer and I am sharing my experience and benefits I have gained here. I am sure shooting macro can also help boost your photography growth if you are currently starting out and are very new to the photography universe. 

If you want to learn more about my techniques on shooting macro, you can check out my video sharing my full insect macro shooting execution here (click). Alternatively, you may also choose to read the blog article version here (click). 

Special shout out to a friend and someone who have inspired me a lot to pick up and do macro photography, Amir Ridhwan. Do check out his Flickr site showcasing many wonderful photographs of Malaysian spiders. It is impossible to see his work and not be inspired to shoot more macro. 

It was because of my first few outings with Amir that got me super excited about macro, and soon after it became a weekly endeavor, hiking up forest reserves outside of the city area just to hunt for those tiny critters. I admit part of the fun was in the hunt and seeing some small creatures that I have not seen before, and having the ability to capture their portraits and bring those photographs home was like a superpower. The shooting process was addictive, together with the thrill and the rush of doing something physically intense. Yes, you do sweat buckets and burn tonnes of energy doing a session of insect macro photography. I sometimes wonder if I sweat more in an hour's intense insect macro shooting or a two hour tennis match.