Scope of Competition
For this competition, the focus is on the principle of extreme magnification in capturing items or elements not normally viewed.
Open Theme – image can be fish, insect, mammal, reptile, plant, vegetable, fruit, flowers, water drops, spider webs, money, object, etc…
Both detailed and accurate representation of a subject and creative interpretation and impression through selective focus, etc… are acceptable.
The terms ‘close-up’ and ‘macro’ are often used to describe the same type of magnification of an image. However technically speaking, a ‘close-up’ is an image with a reproduction ratio ranging from 1:10 to just below life size. Whereas ‘macro’ is life size (1:1) to 10:1 life size.
Close-up photography covers a broader range of lens options and techniques to achieve maximum magnification. The key emphasis of this competition is to “filling the frame is paramount” without the requirement of cropping the image in post processing. Therefore, appropriate composition is required at the time of image capture.
For this competition, you can use a dedicated macro prime lens, zoom lens, or a regular lens using a diopter, extension tubes, bellows, close up filters, lens extender or reverse lens. A combination of these devices are also permitted.
Editing Criteria
Restricted Editing – Images cannot be cropped in post processing to simulate a macro image. Therefore, the appropriate composition must be taken at time of image capture.
Editing may include basic clean up, white balance adjustment, tone adjustments color correction, clarity, vibrance, saturation, sharpening and dodging/burning – as well as focus stacking, multiple exposure.
IMPORTANT NOTE – For this competition, the Entrant must preserve the original JPG or RAW formatted files containing the metadata details.
Colour or black & white or monochrome images are permitted.
