This is going to be an area for essays about trips out, gear, techniques and all things closeup or macro.
Included in this are going to be images ranging from the absolute smallest field I can capture (something around 20x magnification) through to whole dragonflies where the subject is maybe 10cm across with context, but which show details the eye won't capture because of being too far away or too fast moving. I define macro as starting at 1:2 magnification, where a 10 mm insect occupies 5 mm of the sensor, and ultra-macro at anything bigger than 2:1, where that same 10mm insect is 20mm at the sensor. Note, I'm defining at the sensor. By the time you view an image on a phone screen that magnification ratio may have gone from 1:1 where the subject was 10 mm wide on the sensor to being 5x or 6x magnification. On my iMac that grows to maybe 40x magnification. A typical flower stamen and pollen shot therefore may on a computer be 100x magnification.
As I said in my notes elsewhere, I prefer to shoot living subjects. Which is not to say I condemn picking up dead flies or butterfly wings, but I am absolutely opposed to killing or intentionally harming subjects just to get a photo. Ok, I admit I've inadvertently harmed subjects, crashing through a spiders web for example, but I try to do the minimum harm to my subjects and cause the minimum of stress. I don't corner them if I can avoid it for example. Ideally they ignore me completely, or feel safe being able to avoid the camera. To which end, I prefer my little 60mm Olympus macro lens, even on an E-M1 MkIII as that is smaller and less intrusive than a larger sensor equivalent. Have you seen the size of some of the full frame lenses?
At some point I will be including some essays on gear, and the mountain of kit I have, and the evolution of it from film days onwards. I've always had a keen interest in the natural world. As a child my parents bought me a microscope, but the necessity of making slides and the hassle with illumination and the transitory nature of the view were frustrating. I wanted to photograph these glimpses to show others the beauty of the natural world, but there was no camera adapter and at the time no real camera to use. With a film camera I bought the Tamron 90mm SP lens that gave 1:2 magnification, then the extension tube for it to get to 1:1. When I moved from Nikon to Contax I bought the excellent auto bellows, but they're not easy to use in the field. I rigged multiflash TTL with Metz flashes for studio work, and added reversing rings and coupling rings for field use. Not many images came out well because with film the depth of field soon bit, and I had never heard of focus stacking at the time. Moving into the digital era one of my first purchases was the 60mm Macro giving 1:1 natively at the sensor. Then I added extension tubes and then the Raynox 250 diopter, then modified an extension tube to add in the 1.4x teleconverter. Most recently I've added a microscope objective to the bellows for high magnifications, giving the sharpest images yet at 10x magnification plus, but those images need focus stacking to be anything other than abstracts and the rail system I've been using is not precise enough now, so my next purchase may be a matorised or micrometer platform.
I will expand more on kit and working practises over time in stories here. The first one One Afternoon Behind The Church was a minimalist walk, with one body, one lens, no lighting modification. The next one is likely to be a look at ultra macro where the kit gets complicated. I hope you enjoy what I have seen, and captured and can share. There are so many shots I have not yet captured, and every time I see someone else's work, it drives me to be as good as them, so there will be more.