Turtles All the Way Down

If asked to draw a leaf, most people might sketch a simple green shape with a stem. But a real leaf, like one from a peepal tree, is much more complex. It's heart-shaped with a pointy tip, has noticeable veins spreading from the base, and a smooth, shiny surface. The upper side is dark green, and the bottom is lighter. I could talk for a long time about its details.

Before I got into macro photography, I wouldn't have noticed these things.

So, how has taking pictures of insects and tiny things changed me?

Can photography affect the way you think?

Pic 1: Dragonfly close-up

In the world of tiny things that macro photography explores, there are details we usually don't see with our eyes alone. Each photo makes our brain work hard to understand all the small details.

Pic 2: Building a house isn't easy!

With a macro lens, a simple walk becomes a close, detailed, and thoughtful exploration. Everything is right in front of you, and it's very, very small. The heroes of a macro photo are also very small. Using a macro lens (100mm f2.8) means my photos have an incredibly small focus – almost the thickness of a sheet of paper. But the time it takes to explore this tiny world and find good moments for a photo is long. Time slows down.

Pic 3: The business end of a Hibiscus

If you could look even closer with a microscope, you'd see even more details, much more than what we can see in a photo. It reaches unfathomable scales as we try to understand the fabric of the cosmos (we will keep this discussion for another post). The beauty is that all the levels of what's happening exist together. We don't break everything down to the smallest parts or think about them all the time. However, paying a bit more attention to small things in our daily lives can be helpful.

Pic 4: An innocent bee falls for the crab spider stealth

This idea applies to everything. Looking closer always shows more, and it's often not what you'd expect. Even a character's face in digital comics is made up of tiny dots of different colours. Sand, when you touch it, is made of a few different types of grains, and none of them is exactly the colour of "sand." There are scientists studying sand from the moon under microscopes, as shown in this TED talk.

Pic 5: Enjoying a monsoon day out on Aloe flowers

You don't need a special trick for macro-vision – just stay curious about details, even when you think you already know something well. You're just looking closer to see more of what's already there: the sounds that make up the busy neighborhood, the living things and materials in a country trail, the ideas and emotions during a friendly argument. Everything has details, even when we think we're looking at a simple piece of rock or the finals of a cricket World Cup match (the emotions attached are for another day).

Pic 6: The magic of genetic dispersion

To understand more about complexity and depth, you need to slow down. Spend more time looking at fewer things (like reading less news!). Rushing means you miss the little things. Walking too fast is a terrible way to experience a place, no matter how big or small. On a bigger scale, you might miss beautiful things like different desert flowers, a quiet butterfly on a blossom, or a fast dragonfly searching for lunch. A lot is happening down there, but we just have to slow down to notice it.

Pic 7: Eager to unfurl

Macro photography's principles also apply to other senses. What happens when you look, feel, smell, and taste things as if they're new, even if they're not? Study the parts of a grapefruit as you eat it, notice how the notes change when you listen to the latest song by Arijit Singh or really listen to the words someone is saying.

Pic 8: The beauty of a hydrophobic coat

The goal isn't to quieten the mind or have super focus, but to remember that everything in life has lots of details. We can pay attention to these details in different ways. Maybe we rely too much on simple impressions.

This idea also works for higher-level thinking and relationships. Exploring a topic at a high resolution – looking closely at all the details – makes it more interesting and unique. Trying to understand a tough question, like whether alcohol should be prohibited or if someone like Henry Kissinger is a hero, shows that things are very complicated. Your original question keeps splitting into more 'Whys'. You can learn things and summarize them, but the final answer can evade the best.

Pic 9: Nature's pixel art - Butterfly wing

In today's world with lots of information, we tend to make quick conclusions about complex topics. Our brains, trying to make sense of low-quality information on big issues like climate change, and gender issues end up with simple, ideologically-driven views. The real world is resistant to simple answers, but our brains want them. Social media seems designed to feed this need.

Pic 10: Fibonacci in cacti?

While our brains can handle simple ideas, they're still mostly built for high-resolution experiences. We can tell if the ground is dry or damp just by smelling it. We can sense small changes in someone's intentions during a conversation, but we couldn't describe a fruit in detail if our lives depended on it. Ever wondered why many lasting relationships begin with shared experiences like travelling or living together? Understanding each other happens at a more detailed level.

Pic 11: Flower of Indian Beech (Honge Mara in Kannada)

I think we would benefit from consciously trying to see things in detail again, paying more attention to both our experiences and our ideas. The mindfulness involved in this activity is summed up by the powerful phrase "The Power of Now." Nothing exemplifies this when you are baring your soul to nature from behind the lens.

Pic 12: A blue-banded bee catching up with sleep

The world has infinite details, and we're made to experience a deeper part of it. The truth is in the details, going all the way down (or within ourselves). Any ideas we have about it are just on the surface.

Go ahead. Switch the ‘macro mode’ in your camera and your life.