Olympus OM-10, handheld Olympus 50mm 1.4 +4 Diopter Kodak Gold 400 Exposure unrecorded

Foolish

This is the other side of the coin from the Dewdrops photo. Taken years before when I was still largely a novice, I was using close-up diopters (magnifying lenses that screw on a normal lens) and working without a tripod. I got lucky -- my subject was flat so Depth-Of-Field wasn't too much of an issue, I was using a fast lens and film, and the light was bright. It's entirely possible that I was wearing a white shirt, allowing some reflected light to soften the shadows.

Diopters, by the way, are about the worst way to do macro work. They're often not very good and introduce distortion at the edges, especially the single-element kind that I had at the time.

In fact, there's so many ways this photo could have come out badly, that I can't take a whole lot of credit for my skills. But I still like it...