Experimenting with macro photography

The topic at my photography class this afternoon was macro or close-up photography. After an hour of classroom instruction with powerpoint slides and plenty of examples, we had an hour and a half to play around. One of the instructors had set up stations with different objects, i.e. weathered barn siding, coins, different kinds of flowers, bright colored crayons, etc, and we were turned loose to take pictures, applying the skills we were learning. The peacock feather was one of my macro attempts today.

When I say "turned loose," I don't mean to imply that we were left on our own. There were quite a few experienced members of CPS (Cleveland Photographic Society) in the room to help us out. They even shared their own tripods and macro lenses with students who didn't have their own. So I had the opportunity to try out, with their help, a kind of photography in which I had next to no experience. I was really pushing the envelope today, and it was great fun!