Big SHOT

It takes a special pro—a macro photographer, they call him—to capture the enormous visual complexity of a hummingbird or a bumblebee.

All good photography takes skill, but macro photography? That’s for the big guns. This type of camera work involves getting “up close and personal” with small subjects, often tiny creatures or plants found in nature—bugs, butterflies, flora, fauna. Such photos capture every antenna, every petal, every minute detail, as if these mini-subjects were human-sized or larger.

A macro photographer uses a “macro” camera lens, which employs varying focal lengths to get close to the action. And Los Angeles-based Danny Perez is one of them. He’s a versatile artist—besides his photography he’s a musician and a filmmaker. His life work, he says, is “capturing the vibrant colors of life.”

A few years after purchasing his first camera, a Nikon F4, the Venezuela-born Perez bought his first and only macro lens. “I discovered this amazing dimension in nature that so few have ever captured and that is rarely explored,” his Fstoppers photography profile page declares. The lens, he explains, “allowed me to discover a complex world of fascinating creatures and the incredible colors of their natural habitat.”

The next few pages showcase Perez’s pictures—and there’s more on Instagram @dannyperezphotography. Each image testifies to the wonderland of visual detail present in tiny creatures—if only we take time to look closely enough.