To get you started, here are 30 of the most influential artists working today in the niche. Believe us, it’s worth following them!
What Is Macro Photography?
Macro photography is about taking closeups of small subjects and making them look much bigger than life-size. Its subjects can be any living creatures from flowers to insects or details of larger things. Also, macros can be about lifeless phenomenons, such as snowflakes, waterdrops or objects, like a piece of jewellery. Tiny animals in such a large magnification can look like they are from another planet, this is what takes our breaths away. It can require special equipment, like macro lenses or microscopes, but there are photographers who use their smartphones for macro photography. If you are interested in macro photography, make sure to protect wildlife and don’t cause any harm while photographing!
Who Are The Most Influential Macro Photographers?
Let’s take a look at the work of 30 of our current favourite macro photographers!
Adam Gor
Adam is a biologist from Hungary, who has been photographing since 2000 and took it to a professional level bit-by-bit. He mostly photographs butterflies and moths. His images are perfectly composed, he always manages to catch the moments when the beauty of his subjects is the most visible. These photos also make the viewer wonder how patient Adam can be.
A post shared by Adam Gor (@goradam)
Javier Rupérez
Javier Rupérez is a Spanish photographer who specialises in extreme macro photography. This sub-genre focuses on details that are almost invisible to the naked eye. His macro shots perfectly capture the surprising and scary beauty of insects. Javier really makes us rethink what we know about the world around us.
A post shared by Javier Rupérez (@quenoteam)
Andrey Savin
Andrey Savin is an underwater photographer and videographer. He is a certified diver and he spends a lot of time underwater. His unique set of skills allows him to take outstanding macro photos that you don’t get to see very often. He travels a lot and he has guided tours and workshops where you can go with Andrey to take as vibrant and diverse images as him.
A post shared by Andrey Savin 📸 Solo diver (@uw.art)
Hans Thomassen
Hans Thomassen is a Brazilian biologist, researcher, photographer and entrepreneur. His aim is to raise awareness about nature and fight for a sustainable world. You can meet a lot of different creatures among his images. Insects, spiders, amphibians or reptiles are all his favourite subjects to take macro photographs of. He also educates his followers by writing informative captions.
A post shared by Hans Thomassen (@hans.thomassen)
Jamie Price
Jamie Price is specialising in macro, portrait, pet portrait, and product photography. He is based in Leicestershire and he is photographing a lot in his home. He can make the scariest spiders look so astonishing that the viewer forgets to be afraid. But you can find small objects, fruits, flowers or seeds among his macro images, not only living creatures.
A post shared by Jamie (@doogle1976)
Karla Thompson
Karla Thompson is an arthropod conservationist photographer with a passion for nature. She stands for ethical photography and hopes to build a bridge between nature and humans. Her images are vivid and beautiful, and her lively captions are effectively taking her photographed creatures closer to us. From bees to spiders, she captures everything she encounters.
A post shared by Karla Thompson (@karlathompson)
Alan Shapiro
Alan is an award-winning photographer and advertising chief creative officer. Photography started out as a hobby for him, but soon it became his passion. He is into more genres, and luckily macro photography is one of them. His macro photography mostly consists of amazing, painting-like images of flowers.
A post shared by Alan Shapiro (@alanshapiro515)
James Weiss
James Weiss introduces himself as “James is a funny guy who got lost in life and found his passion in pond scum!”. This basically sums it up. He photographs and takes videos of microscopic organisms, like amoebas, and writes fun and easy-to-understand blog posts about them. Thanks to his microscope and deep knowledge, he guides us into a world we tend to forget about.
A post shared by Jam’s Germs (@jam_and_germs)
Christian Brockes
Christian Brockes is a master of extreme macro photography. The German photographer uses his work to raise awareness of environmental problems. He documents small creatures that sometimes are not even familiar to us and opens our eyes to the wonders of nature. This is an effective way of fighting against habitat loss, climate change and the usage of pesticides and herbicides.
A post shared by WILD MACRO – ᴍᴀᴄʀᴏ ᴘʜᴏᴛᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜʏ (@gomacrode)
Alexey Kljatov
Alexey Kljatov’s passion is taking macro photographs of snowflakes because he finds their unlimited diversity amazing and worth capturing. His photos were published by NASA, CNN, Wall Street Journal and several other places. It’s no wonder he became famous, his images are incredible. They are beautiful, sharp, and simply mesmerising, you just can’t stop scrolling through his posts!
A post shared by Алексей Клятов snowflake macro (@alexey_kljatov)
Diego Mendez
Diego Mendez is a macro photographer from Argentina. He is passionate about the world of insects and spiders. He only posts cruelty-free photographs and doesn’t use any baits to attract insects. Also, he solely photographs live animals in the field, and his motto is “all good things are wild and free.”
Diego Mendez 👹🌍 🇦🇷~Argentina~ (@shanghai46) által megosztott bejegyzés
Nathan Renfro
Nathan is a gemologist and geologist, who takes stunning images with his microscope. His subjects are gems, rocks and minerals and he works with a ZEISS microscope. At first, his gallery looks like he was a graphic designer or a painter, as he captures things we could never see. The surfaces of these formations are geometric, and due to the photography techniques, they appear colourful and can’t be compared to anything we know.
A post shared by Nathan Renfro (@microworldofgems)
Marit Hovden
Marit Hovdens’s main subjects are drops, which she captures in stunning macro photographs. She even has a dedicated feature account (@drops_creative) for drop photos, you can use the #drops_creative hashtag to get featured. Her images are magical, the water drops look like tiny pearls, and she plays with reflecting the background in them.
A post shared by 🇳🇴Marit💦🐱🌷🐝 (@marit_hov)
Kenneth R Myers
Kenneth R Meyers was born and raised in Panama and he captures the beautiful wildlife there. This way he raises awareness to the importance of conservation and protecting nature. His images are mostly of birds and tiny insects and they are almost like drawings or paintings. They are incredibly vivid and colourful and guide the viewer into a less-known world.
A post shared by Ken Myers🇵🇦 (@panama_photos)
Michela Campanaro
Michela is an Italian photographer whose photos are raw and emotional. You’ll notice that most of her photos look dark and unedited. This effect only enhances her tiny models. Michela also owns a feature account with over 22,000 followers on Instagram. There, you can submit your work using the hashtag #Thehub_macro to get featured.
A post shared by miki68 (@campanaromichela)
Oscar Rojas
Oscar is a macro photographer based in Florida. He has amazingly sharp closeups of insects, spiders, and sometimes caterpillars. He also captures their behaviours, like when spiders are eating other tiny things. He even describes in his captions what we can see, and adds the technical details of the process he photographs. It’s incredibly useful for photographers and every other viewer as well.
A post shared by OSCAR ROJAS (@macro_hobby_miami)
Monica
Monica has painting-like macro images. She shots flowers with nicely blurred backgrounds. During post-processing, she plays with the colours to add depth and atmosphere to the photographs. They all look soft and give a calm feeling, which makes them ideal for decorating any homes. Who couldn’t imagine these beauties on their wall?
A post shared by Monica (@lesfleursdelanuit)
Amthel Al-Dayni
Amthel Al-Dayni is a photographer with a strong passion for macro photography. He doesn’t consider himself a professional, but his images don’t tell the same. His work is full of stunning and colourful photos of insects, spiders, flowers, fungi, and nowadays mostly drops. He gets really creative with his waterdrop photographs, reflecting different subjects from the background.
A post shared by Amthel Al-Dayni (@amthelaldayni)
Andriansyah Andriansyah
Andriansyah is an Indonesian macro photographer with an interest of tiny animals. He takes stunning and surprising images of insects, flowers, spiders or snails, and sometimes reptiles or amphibians. He professionally freezes movements and shows the interactions of the living things around him. Besides the animals, you can find objects, like jewellery in his portfolio.
A post shared by andriansyah (@aa_andri)
Rita Sari Dewi
Rita is a macro photographer with dream-like images. Her main subjects are sharply in focus, while the background is soft and blurred, giving the images a beautiful and minimalist atmosphere. She plays with drops and reflections in them, but you can also find stunning images of butterflies and bees among her photographs.
A post shared by Rita Sari Dewi (IN People) (@ritacrochetgirl)
Kristine
Kristine is a nature and macro photographer from Latvia. She has her own blog where she is touching different topics and offers tips and tutorials on making images like hers. She has a unique style with a combination of strong and pale colours. She captures flowers, leaves, fungi, insects or frozen bubbles, all of them in a professional way.
A post shared by K • Nature ↟ Macro ↟ Flowers (@macro.viewpoint)
Katarina Jencova
Katarina Jencova is a Slovakian macro photographer with dreamy, and sometimes even cute images. She manually organises her subjects in her frame, put flowers on snails, or snails on flowers, and the result is always beautiful. In most of her images, tiny creatures are interacting with flowers, and she likes to capture them in a minimalist style.
A post shared by Katarina Jencova Photography (@kotuha)
Bert Nijholt
Bert Nijholt manages to photograph the same subjects without making them look boring. Sometimes you can meet his images of flowers or birds, and he even has stunning landscapes. But his photos mainly feature small drops of water on dandelion seeds. These droplets are so tiny that they resemble transparent gems or pearls.
A post shared by Bert Nijholt (@bert.nijholt)
Julie
Julie is based in Michigan and Montana, and she takes stunning macro images. Her work is mostly about plants, their leaves and flowers in all seasons. She captures the frozen world of winter with using magical pale colours, and the lively springs with stronger ones. Her images show how sensitive she is to the soft and delicate beauty of the world.
A post shared by J U L I E (@juleslegacyphotography)
Chris Ruijter
Chris Ruijter is a nature photographer from the Netherlands, with a passion for macro photography. He is a Ricoh-Pentax ambassador and he uses his gear to capture sharp and gorgeous images of dragonflies, fungi, spiders or any other insects and plants. He documents nature around him with great sensitivity and he pays attention to details.
A post shared by Chris Ruijter (@chrisruijter)
Zohre
Zohre is a mobile photographer, and she is a great example of what mobiles can do in our day-to-day lives. Using a Samsung A750 with a macro lens, Zohre takes gorgeous closeups of insects and flowers. Her images are proof that you don’t always need a professional camera to take stunning macro pictures.
A post shared by zohre (@zohre.1206)
Karthikeyan Shanmugasundaram
Karthikeyan Shanmugasundaram’s work is mostly about animals and insects in motion. This has earned him recognition in the macro photography community. His images are so sharp and colourful that the viewer has the feeling they can start moving in any second. It’s not an easy task to capture tiny flying creatures, but he manages to do it in a professional way.
A post shared by Karthikeyan Shanmugasundaram (@karthikeyan.photographer)
Wiktor Borozdin
Wiktor is from Freiburg, Germany. He loves to take pictures in the forest, and he has many beautiful photos of sunflowers and poppy flowers. He hopes that people will respect nature more if they see the little details of the world. His images look like paintings, and he uses the colours in a clever way to enhance shapes and texture.
Wiktor (@wiktorborozdin) által megosztott bejegyzés
Андрей Шаповалов
Андрей Шаповалов is a macro photography enthusiast. He lives in Grodno, Belarus, where he shoots in a home photo studio. In his gallery, you will find wonderful photos of insects and spiders. His extreme macro photographs seem like they were taken of creatures from another planet. He uses focus stacking to make his whole subjects to be sharply in focus.
Андрей Шаповалов (@shapomacro) által megosztott bejegyzés
Wahid Subari
Wahid Subari is a photographer based in Indonesia, who has amazing images of insects and spiders. He mostly captures them sitting on flowers or any kinds of plants. They are all sharply in focus and have realistic colouring. He documents the tiny creatures in his surrounding in a beautiful and professional way.
A post shared by WAHID SUBARI (@subariwahid)
Conclusion
Macro photography is a genre that guides us into totally different worlds while introducing the tiniest creatures and objects around us. It’s always a good idea to get inspiration from other photographers’ work, and hopefully, you took delight in our list.
