Shoot Close-ups

1 Look for colour and pattern
Sweeping landscapes are easy to spot, but it can take time to start seeing potentially good close-up photographs, especially when they occupy a space less than 10x8 inches. Look for good combinations of colour and pattern and don’t be afraid to move objects into the right place if they don’t quite fit your compositional plans. Try to position yourself overhead and shoot downwards to ensure that different objects record as shapes in their own right. Soft, even light is best for xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

2 Narrow depth of field
Depth of field is not just influenced by your aperture setting but by your proximity to the subject, too. Shooting an object less than one metre away will create a depth of field of a few centimetres at most, even if you use an aperture of f11 or f16. Of course, this effect can be stunning and will blur out distracting background detail to leave your main subject looking its best. To create the narrowest depth of field possible, set your lens at its maximum telephoto setting and choose the largest aperture possible, such as f2 or f4.

3 Deep depth of field.
There’s no reason why you can’t shoot subjects which have a close-up element, like this fun example. Taken at close range, this ‘in-your-face’ cow portrait gives the viewer a greater sense of being there that a ‘normal’ viewpoint would, and shows the animal in the context of its surroundings. To create this effect, you need to zoom your lens out to its most wideangle, set your aperture to its smallest setting and then get in nice and close. If your camera doesn’t have manual aperture selection, use the Landscape shooting mode for xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

4 Light and texture
Light is a crucial factor when you are trying to capture textures in your subjects. Sidelighting is much more conducive to this effect than direct, flat illumination, and the slanting, low-angled daylight of early morning or a mid-winter’s day is ideal for revealing texture. Don’t forget to experiment with a range of different compositions when you are shooting in close-up. If you are struggling to find a good close-range subject, try changing your zoom to a more telephoto setting and see what you can isolate further away.