When I attended Denise Ippolito's Flower Workshop last month, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be a true macro shooter or more of a close-up shooter. The main difference between a macro and a close-up is that a macro is life size (i.e. 1:1) while a closeup is more of a fill the frame concept. So I played around with both during the workshop (after all, digital is free). Another experimentation was to shoot the same flower at different apertures to see how the depth of field affected the macro shots. The photo above was shot at f/2.4; the photo below was shot at f/22. As you can see, the depth of field has a huge impact on this type of photography.
As I looked through all of my images (I tried this experimentation on most of my images), I immediately knew which ones I liked better, except for this one. I like them both so I thought I would throw it out to you. Which one do you prefer?