"Macro photography is complicated," admits nature photographer Tony North

It’s the third week of March and the wet winter is ensuring a soggy start to spring, but that isn’t dampening Tony North’s spirits – or his initiative. “I was out early this morning doing some photography because it was cloudy and not windy, which is good for macro,” he tells me from his home near Manchester. I’m already wondering what he could have been shooting because it’s too early for many insects and flowers, but then he reveals the unexpected: “There’s not many insects about yet, but I’ve got one that I brought back from Florida – a chrysalis of a zebra swallowtail – and just recently it emerged, so I was photographing that this morning.”

As any macro photographer knows, cool weather and early morning are the best times to photograph insects in the field as they will remain still until they have warmed up enough to move. And so it was for Tony’s new arrival from Florida. “I was out at 6.30 because it was less windy. This butterfly I was photographing is native to the southern United States, so it was probably pretty cold for it.” Not half – it certainly wasn’t March in Miami!

Tony says he’s only been taking photography seriously since 2016, and macro since 2017, but in just seven years he is already a winner of some major international awards for his startling images…

You only got into photography recently, but has your love of nature been lifelong?

Oh, very much so. I love nature and art also. I know more about art than photography, to be honest. I am influenced by paintings, some of my abstracts are based on abstract painters, but when I’m trying to create, even with macro, I’m always thinking of this work artistically. That’s more important than whether it is technically good. It has to be well it and sharp, and work compositionally too.

Aesthetics are important to you.

Yes, because that’s the whole point. For me, it’s about looking at something and enjoying it. It’s about artistic pleasure, not just ‘this is an accurate record of this creature’.

Do you have any particular favorite subjects and locations?

Butterflies are my favorite things; I photograph butterflies a lot. And damselflies. I like dragonflies too, but damselflies are a little bit easier to get sharp because at rest a dragonfly’s body and wings are like a T-shape, and it’s hard to get an angle where you get all of that sharp. Damselflies have the wings behind them so they are all in one plane of focus, and they’re very beautiful as well. I photograph lots of different things but those are probably my favorites. And mushrooms. And flowers. I like lots of things.

How did you get into landscapes, cityscapes, abstracts and astrophotography?

It’s a good question. Going back to my love of nature it’s not just about the small creatures and the flowers, but the whole landscape. For many years, I have enjoyed going on country walks and also to cities for the art and architecture. Astrophotography is interesting because I’ve always been interested in space. The Milky Way is a stunning thing, especially when you’ve got something nice underneath it.

Where was your International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) winning picture shot?

That was taken in La Palma, which I’ve been to before and it was one of my first attempts at astrophotography. It’s a very good place for astrophotography because it’s got very clear skies on top of a mountain above the cloud. There’s an observatory there and I’ve seen pictures there that just blew my mind, so I thought this would be a great location. IGPOTY is my favorite competition, so I found a plant for the foreground.

Was that plant, the blue tajinaste, what you had in mind?

I was aiming for a different plant, the giant viper’s bugloss, which is as tall as me and it’s a fantastic foreground subject for an astro shot. There were lots of them there but I couldn’t find one with a clear sky behind it, so I was looking around for something else and I found this little blue flower.

How long were you up there for?

I was up there from about two in the afternoon wandering around trying to find the right subject and the right spot for six or seven hours. Once I found this flower, I put up the tripod and shot the foreground scene with a very big view, including the flower, about 10pm, just after sunset, so that was blue hour. It wasn’t really that dark, but I knew the Milky Way was going to be in the right position at about two in the morning, so I had to sit in the dark for about four hours.

What did you do to pass the time?

I entertained myself by downloading an app! Amazingly there was a good signal up there, so I downloaded an app that identified the constellations. I had this thing called a star tracker, which means you can rotate the camera at the same speed as the Earth, so if you do long exposures the stars stay as little points instead of becoming trails. That way, you get a lot more light in, a lot more detail and colour. You stitch together the sky and the ground separately in Lightroom and put them together in Photoshop, a process which is difficult and time-consuming.

Sounds challenging…

The problem was that the shots I took of the ground at 2am were very dark, and it was very windy so all the plants were just a blur and it looked terrible, so I ended up using the blue hour shot for the ground and the 2am for the sky.

Do you feel winning that competition with this image is your greatest achievement so far?

Probably. It’s a big competition and it’s certainly the most important in terms of prize money, by a long way. The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) awards are pretty big as well. And I won N-Photo’s Nikon Photographer of the Year competition! That particular picture has done very well for me, it won the IGPOTY fungus category as well.

Apart from winning prizes, how else do competitions help you?

The fact that it’s a goal to reach towards. That motivates you to improve and produce something to that standard. It forces me to be much more critical of my own work. Is this good enough to win or just be placed in this big competition? Secondly, you see all the images that do win and learn from those, and they give you ideas. Obviously, it’s an ego boost and it helps me be more known and recognized, and since I am trying to make money out of being a photographer, all of this is very helpful to me.

What were you doing before you got into a photographic career?

Well, I did have a camera, a point-and-shoot, so I was into photography but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I wasn’t treating it seriously as a hobby. If I went out for a whole day with my wife I’d take pictures. It was only when I got my first DSLR that I thought, ‘okay, now it’s time to really learn this stuff.’

I do workshops in primary schools, history and science, and that was a lot of work building that up because I had to develop all these activities and artefacts and research it properly. But the current financial situation means schools aren’t booking me as much so I’m moving more towards photography. I do talks and I do workshops and I’m writing a book. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Your wife Catherine has just written a book. Has that spurred you on to produce your own?

Well, we got together partly due to our mutual interest in writing because I’ve written children’s books, a long time ago, and she’s written some novels. For me, writing has always been something that I’m interested in and it seems logical to put my knowledge and experience about macro into a book, and with my pictures.

Are there other photographers who have inspired you?

There are quite a few. For example, Pep Ventosa’s creative urban photography and Sandra Bartocha, who’s done multiple exposures in the natural environment. People who do things a bit more artistically. The big one for me is Henrik Spranz. He’s amazing. He calls it a fairy tale style of macro. It might be of an insect but it’s got lots of plants in the foreground out of focus, so it’s just wonderful bokeh. It’s very hard to do, I’ve tried but I can’t replicate what he does. I’d love to know his secrets.

With warmer months now, which places locally will you go to?

I have a favourite location, Reddish Vale in the Stockport area. It’s a country park about a 15-minute drive from me. A lot of my images are taken there because it’s quite close and it’s got a variety of biodiversity and vegetation. Having gone there so many times I know where to go to find the creatures I’m looking for. There’s one field that has a lot of damselflies, and you can get butterflies and lots of other insects. Down the end of my road, a three-minute walk, there’s a little field and footpath where I can find butterflies as well. I like going abroad because we’re very nature-depleted in Britain. A couple of years ago I went to Greece, last year I went to Bulgaria, this year I’ll be going to Croatia.

How did you learn photography?

I’ve not been directly taught or been on any workshops. I like to teach myself and I want to be original if I can. It’s difficult. It’s easy to just copy other people and if you’re self-taught, even if you look at other people’s images for ideas, then I think it helps you to be a bit more original. Maybe.

How do you stay original then? Is there something in your approach or technique that sets you apart?

It’s very difficult because there are quadrillions of images out there. The main thing is to learn a variety of techniques and try to combine them in a different way. I think this is how a lot of new ideas come about. People come up with a new and different technique but that’s very hard to do.

What about your camera kit, are you still using a Nikon D500?

Yep. I’ve got the Nikon D500 because it’s still a pretty good camera. To get something that would be significantly better and worth upgrading, it would have to be the Nikon Z 8 . Even though I’m doing okay with the D500, maybe one day I’ll get one. I have the Nikon AF-S 105mm macro , which is a good lens, but the Z MC 105mm is supposed to be amazingly sharp.

So, the 105mm is your go-to lens?

I also have a 1.4x teleconverter , which might seem odd for macro because you can just get a 150mm, but I bought it to use with my Nikon 300mm prime lens for birds and bigger animals to get more reach, but it made the image worse. Then I thought, ‘let’s see what happens with it on the macro?’ It looks great, so this converter with the 105mm makes it into a 150mm macro and it goes from 1:1 ratio to 1.4:1.

Anything else in your kit bag?

I also have a Laowa 2.5-5x macro zoom , so that’s for the real close-up stuff, which is lots of fun, but hard to do in the field. I have used it with a live damselfly on a very still day but didn’t quite get to the back with the focus stacking. It’s mostly used for dead creatures and indoors with a light tent and flashes outside of that.

Do you use the D500 when you’re shooting landscapes as well?

Yes, I use the kit lens, the 18-55mm. I know it’s cheap but it’s a very good lens, I think. For the astro, I’ve got the Tokina 11-16mm wide-angle . It’s difficult to find a very good wide-angle lens that’s sharp all the way across, but this one goes quite wide and is ideal for very big views.

Are landscapes something you’re more likely to do when travelling?

I will do some special trips for landscapes with friends, and my wife is into photography too, so when we pick a holiday we’ll be thinking what can we shoot there, whether it’s a city or landscapes or astro. We always plan holidays with that in mind. Also, there’s the Peak District.

Is the Peak District a favourite location for winter landscapes?

Yes, because it’s handy. Snow scenes are very popular and I love them. It can be tricky getting to the location because of some roads being blocked by snow so you end up having to walk miles, but that’s okay, I like that!

I like your snowy monochrome landscape of the Peak District. What makes you decide to convert a colour file into black and white?

Good question. That’s a classic view: the conical hill at the front is called Parkhouse Hill and the one behind it is Chrome Hill. That scene was almost black and white anyway. If there were spots of green somewhere they would be distracting, so it’s better to get rid of them because what you want to focus on are those shapes.

Another example was an image I entered for Landscape Photographer of the Year, which wasn’t completely monochrome as I had left in some orange for the autumn leaves. It’s basically about deciding what’s going to make this scene look the best. Is it full colour? Or, if the colours are dull and you take it out and boost some other things, like clarity to emphasize the textures and shapes, then that’s what I’ll do to make it better.

Are you the sort of photographer who puts extra thought into what you’re going to shoot?

I think that’s just part of the natural process of becoming a better photographer. We had a talk at our camera club a few years ago by Gordon Jenkins, who’s a big character in the PAGB (Photographic Alliance of Great Britain), and he said: “Once you get better, what you’ll start to do is not just go out and look for things to shoot, you’ll have in mind what you’re going to shoot and you’ll go out and try to do it.” Obviously, it can’t apply so much to street photography, but usually you have to think about the precise location, subject, angle, techniques, all of that, to make the best shot.

Yes, planning is key. It’s not always about shooting from the hip…

Yes, but there’s an advantage to that as well. Like you can go out and do some intentional camera movement. There’s a lot of fun in the discovery of that and it’s hard to plan it, but you can to some extent. It depends upon the type of shot, but for macro planning is better.

What’s your single best piece of advice for someone wanting to focus on macro photography?

Macro is complicated – there’s lots of different skills that have to be put together and it’s easy to get flustered and forget something, so my best advice is to be patient and to keep learning all of these separate things and eventually they will come together. It’s like driving: there’s all these different things you have to do when you’re driving and at first it seems overwhelming, but then gradually they all come together. So, just be patient and keep going. It will happen, so don’t give up.

Your wife, Catherine, recently published a book about the connection between photography and mental wellbeing. What can the book tell us?

Her new book Through a Lens Brightly draws on her own personal experience, research findings and a survey of 600 amateur photographers – mostly camera club members. Of the survey respondents, almost all experienced improvements in mood and wellbeing from practising photography, with more than 75% reporting a significant or life-changing impact, with greater therapeutic benefits experienced among people with a mental health diagnosis.

Through a Lens Brightly is available in hardback, softback and PDF formats.

This interview first appeared in N-Photo magazine.

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