Find out how to make your friends envy your photography skills with your handy, ever present IPhone.

In this sweltering, Summer heat no one wants camera straps pulling on their shoulders when working on a hot day weeding, staking and cutting flowers in the dahlia field. It’s a work day, different from a wedding party. Less is more, as in less luggage and more comfort.

It’s when I am working that the best opportunities for photographing dahlias reveal themselves. It could be when my hands and arms are wrapped around their stems and the sunlight sneakily beams through or when the morning and evening dew greet me, sparkling from their throne of elegant dahlia flowers. It’s these enriching moments when we need to pull out the Iphone. Convenience is key, it’s slim, easy to carry and close by.

My IPhone eight plus is like a handyman and has a macro lens. Phone cameras are getting upgraded with every new release. I can still remember my first flip phone camera with grainy photos. Technology has come a LONG way in a fairly short amount of time.

Macro–the definition is large. With a macro lens we can take a clear photograph of something very small and the lens enlarges to an larger than life size on our camera screen.

To get a macro shot, open your camera, you can get about 2-4 inches away from your subject and hold your finger down on the screen until the focus locks where you want it.

When it locks it will show “AE/AF Lock” on your screen. This keeps the camera from changing the focus to some other object or leaf further back in the frame. Also do not change distance once you have locked the focus. Take your masterpiece photograph. AE stands for Auto Exposure and AF for Auto Focus. To unlock simply touch the screen again and the letters disappear and the lock is off.

Use your new Macro skills to focus on the peachy fuzz standing on the dahlia flower petals. Catch the fluff of pollen in the flower’s center or the perfect folds of opening buds. Photography professionals say that the macro lens is used the most for flowers and insects. The two things I have the most of in the very same location!

Go ahead take a close up photo of the jewels in your garden and be astonished at how clear it is. Then send the flower missive off to your family and friends. Everyone welcomes beauty in their lives.

Dahlias have lots of petals and when lit from behind they are stunning. Many floral photos on social media, are taken with expensive DSLR cameras, but there are also excellent IPhone photographs once a gardener learns the capabilities of her/his phone camera.

If you do not have a DSLR Camera—Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera—make use of what you do have. No doubt you have this thin device on your person most of the day, attached to one hand or another.

Your IPhone can be used as a macro-dream-catcher and not just a pocket warmer, computer, typewriter, radio, theater, mailbox, alarm, stopwatch or paperweight. (On occasion I even talk to people on it.) Such a busy office inside that phone case…Toiling silently around the clock. Lately the photography department has been the most active.

Until tomorrow…Stop and catch nature’s beauty with macro photography. Enlarge your world.