My series 'Anatomy of a Lumia photo' (here's #1) has proved popular, even though I cheated with the HP Elite x3 instead for #2. #3 had a lovely clock, #4 was all about framing, in #5, I got down and dirty with nature, in #6 I had a rosy dilemma to solve, and in #7 I took a satisfying low light snap in appalling weather. Here, in #8, I get extremely close to an impressive moth...

The idea of this series is to give you an insight into my thought processes that went into achieving each image, in the hope that it might inspire you to better photos too.

Here's the final snap, to give a flavour of what follows:

OK, perhaps not for the squeamish, but I love using high resolution photography to get closer to the natural world and to see detail that my eyes couldn't supply on their own. 

How did I manage this natural world snap? Read on...

I spotted the moth taking a break against the french windows - unusual, they normally come to rest on vegetation or walls. But I seized the opportunity:

This first shot, above, was to show the context, shooting through double glazing. First priority was to get closer, obviously, so I got within the usual 15cm or so and managed this:

Now, shooting something glassy gives the risk of a reflection and if you look closely you can see the reflection of my Lumia 950 XL (with Mozo back)! However, you can usually vary the angle by 5 or 10 degrees and get away with a head-on-like shot but with no reflection. And in addition, as my phone was set to 8MP (oversampled), I took advantage of the 1.5x PureView zoom in the 950 XL and then managed:

Much better and lovely detail on the moth's underside, but I still wasn't happy. I wanted more 3D interest, more of an idea of what made the moth tick. So I tried shooting it from above and to one side, aiming for an oblique view through the glass:

Now I was getting somewhere. So let's use that lossless PureView zoom again - I may have strayed slightly into digital zoom territory as well here - and try to get 'closer'. The result is the 'final' photo also shown at the top:

You can grab the full photo from OneDrive if you want to check it out at full 8MP resolution. (I guess I should give some credit to the window cleaner too, the detail doesn't seem to have suffered too much despite shooting through layers of glass!)

Comments welcome. Is this series useful to you? Feel free to share (in the comments below) any examples of great photos you've taken with your Nokia/Microsoft Lumia or similar device, along with your own thinking...

PS. The next in the series is no less close, but is a much more 'palatable' subject! Watch this space....