Firstly, a warm welcome to all more recent newcomers to the group! We hope everyone is enjoying their membership here, and it's great to see the group grow and at the same time keep a high standard of photos going through the galleries. We realise that often things that aren't accepted here are soon to be found in other groups, so although it's probably good that everyone has a chance to get their deviations seen somewhere, it is also good that we at #Tiny-Worlds-Photo are continuing to grow strong numerically and in quality. This is, of course, why the membership is not open to everyone, but only to those who are deemed capable enough as photographers in the field of macro and close-ups to keep a higher level of interest and quality going through our galleries.

I'd like to suggest that everyone again reads the Guidelines for submissions, and reminds themselves also of what is or isn't acceptable to this group (Links at the top of the page). Don't read them just once, but read them fairly regularly, particularly if you belong to several groups. Every group has its own particular rules and definitions of Macro - v - Close-up photography. From the examples given on our article on Macro and Close-ups - their differences (linked at top of page), you should be able to gauge to what lengths you can go when submitting in both these categories. When it comes to close-ups, please try not to push those boundaries to include more and more in your pictures. For macro photography, we will accept true macro as well as really good quality photos taken with the smaller cameras provided they look to be real macro shots. We don't wish to exclude people who cannot afford a DSLR and macro lens - but quality is a must!

Here are just a few tips

If your particular camera produces a lot of unwanted noise, then ensure you clean it up using a noise removal tool or putting it through a noise removal program. If the area of the subject is not noisy, but the rest is, then try to selectively reduce the noise. Some programs have a pen-tool for doing this.

Keep the ISO number down! The lower the ISO the less noise there will be.

Ensure the lighting conditions are good! If you try to shoot in low light, you will get noise - and unless you use a tripod and your subject is stationery, you will also get movement.

If your subject is not perfectly sharp at the time of taking the photo, don't try to retrieve the shot afterwards in an editing program, as this will always show up! Often the result is an appearance of over-sharpening; this can be global, producing extra pixels throughout the photo, or it can be locally where a sharpening tool has been used on a subject that was not properly in focus in the first place. It won't work, so get tough and throw it away!

Droplet photos need to be interesting! A photo of a leaf with some droplets on it and nothing refracted in them is not interesting, and neither is a larger droplet on a flower or leaf with no colour or with nothing refracted in it interesting as a main subject. There should always be something within the main focal area of a droplet photo that draws the eye to it and brings a sense of awesomeness.

Strong colours, particularly primary colours or reds mixed with purples, need to be used sparingly in macro photography, as these clash easily, jumping out at the eyes from the screen, often obscuring important detail that may even be the main subject of a photo. This tends to happen quite a lot in droplet + glitter photos.

Watch out for blown-out highlights in all photography! Difficult one, I know, but important! Try to adjust your lighting conditions, or your camera settings to prevent this happening.

Soft focus needs to be very professionally applied in macro and most close-up photography, as there needs to always be an area with pin-point sharp focus to draw the eye. Without this, one can get an impression of general blurriness where the whole photo just doesn't quite register with the viewer's eyes.

If you have a photo that's particularly special to you because it was the one and only chance you had of taking it, you put a huge amount of effort into it, you caught a cold in the process, you had a knee operation because of it - you get the gist - but the outcome of that photo is not up to a good standard, don't submit it to the group!! Arguing in favour of its submission along the lines just mentioned will not make this photo any more special to a uninvolved viewer than a photo of someone's left sock with the title "Left Sock"!

If you find several of your photos getting rejected, take a look at your gallery and remember that there was a reason you became a member; it means we found some really good stuff in there, so maybe you're not submitting your very best shots - and bear in mind that your latest shots may not always be your best ones. Don't give up!!







One of the things we've been noticing more and more, is that people are submitting to the first gallery folder they come across, namely Macro - Drops and Orbs, regardless of the content of the submission. Could we please remind you to take care to submit to the correct folder in the gallery as otherwise your submission stands a high chance of being rejected.

You may have noticed, too, that we are no longer giving explanations for submissions being declined, unless one is specifically asked for. This is because very often the final voter is someone who is not good with English, and wrong impressions can sometimes be gained by submitters if the wording isn't well thought out and sensitive. Added to this, as we get more and more submissions, and many of us are also involved in running other groups too, the time factor becomes a bit of a challenge.

Remember to take a look now and again at the Useful Links page (linked at top of page), as this is constantly updated, often with very interesting new tutorials and other articles. The newest links are at the bottom of the list.




Hopefully you will all have noticed that every Wednesday we put some new photos into the Member's Featured Gallery, and also one deviation becomes the Spotlight of the Week. This is done by weekly nominations made by our staff, and those that get 2 or more nominations are the ones chosen, whilst the one with the highest number of nominations becomes the Spotlight.

I just thought I'd bring this to your attention, as this obviously changes each week, and your photo might just be amongst those chosen.

Each month there is a News Article produced too, featuring the best photos of the month just gone by. These are things for every member to strive to gain mention in and become one of those featured. The next Feature News Article will be produced during the month of May.

Want to know where to find Monthly Member's Features? Look inside Member's Features folder, and you will see on the left a list of folders by month plus a folder containing all the spotlights that we've featured since the inception of this group. The features you see in the current part of that gallery are for the current month.

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