It’s the little things – Dale Morris discovers a different world in his Wilderness backyard

With the help of a macro lens on his Nikon D200 digital camera, Dale Morris discovered a world similar to the Congo in his backyard.

‘You have a size hang-up,’the good doctor told me. ‘But once you start to accept that small things can be beautiful, I think the world will change for you.’

He was right. The world did change – in the most profound and fantastic way. Suddenly, there was so much more to see. The doctor in question was Dan Janzen, a world-renowned ecologist and a man who had spent many of the past 40-odd years of his life on his hands and knees, studying tropical insects.

‘Forget about lions and elephants and all those insignificant big things that blunder around our planet,’ he told me. ‘Concentrate on the insects, parasites, fungi and the crustaceans, for they truly make the ecosystems of our world function.’

So that’s what I did. I re-animated my boyhood games of searching through rock pools, lifting up dead logs and poking around in holes in trees and oh what fun I had (and am still having)! Macro photography is a tool to explore places you might never otherwise consider are even worth exploring.

Armed with a macro lens and an off-shoe flash gun, your backyard suddenly becomes the Congo, full of amazing plants and creatures that you never knew existed. Don’t worry about the technical aspects of macro photography – just like any other form of camera work, practice makes perfect and time will hone your skills. Just get on out there and start looking at the world from a different angle.

Dale Morris lives in Wilderness on the Garden Route and has been a wildlife photojournalist and field conservationist for the past 10 years. To see more of his work, visit http://www.geckoeye.com.