What makes nettles sting?

What makes nettles sting? – Close-up stinging nettle macro photography – Watch on YouTube

Stinging nettles – They caused us all some trauma as children, running into the bushes only to come out covered in stings. But what gives them that unique quality to send people running? We’re going to take a close-up look at some stinging nettles using macro photography to find out what makes nettles sting!

Stinging Nettle Macro Photography

If you’d never seen them before, nettles look pretty harmless to the naked eye. It’s what catches so many kids off guard when they’re not looking for the distinctive shape of the nettle’s leaf.

However, as we all know, stinging nettles have a defence mechanism that will sting unsuspecting shins and send you running back to your parents. The nettles are covered in tiny barbs that are so small, they can easily be mistaken for hairs.

To capture images like these, we need to get much closer to the leaf and stem of the nettles than our naked eyes are used to. This is where the joy of macro photography can begin to reveal some amazing secrets!

Of course, nettle macro photography comes with a risk… you have to handle the nettles! Use gardening gloves or some thick material to protect your hands when picking nettles and you should be fine.

What makes nettles sting?

We used a 25mm f2.8 super macro lens from Laowa that can achieve 2.5 – 5x magnification factors. This amount of magnification is enough to get very close to the stem and leaves of the nettle. Enough to see what gives them their sting!

Looking this close up, it’s clear to see that what might look like hairs are actually tiny barbs. These small spikes are waiting to inject the skin with toxins and cause a reaction that feels like stinging!

Both the stems and the leaves have barbs on them, but the stems have many more than the leaves. Both make for very interesting photography especially when you introduce controlled artificial light!

Lighting for Nettle Macro Photography

There’s a lot of ways to photograph leaves, and that goes for nettles too. Depending on the magnification from your macro lens, you may struggle with depth of field, and getting enough light onto your subject to get good settings.

This is where artificial light can help. Not only to give better settings and a better depth of field, but also for creative options like backlighting the stingers, or shining light through the leaf it’s self for a vivid green glow!

We used the flexible lighting arms of the Adaptalux Studio lighting system to place light in amongst the treacherous leaves of the nettles without risking too many stings.

The placement of the light is just as important as the brightness and with a system designed for macro photography, you can have the best of both worlds.

So what have we learned from our excursion into close-up stinging nettle macro photography? What makes nettles sting us from only a brush against them? Well the answer is clear from photos like these, they are covered in tiny needles!

Because of the size of the barbs they only need a small amount of force to get a few of these stuck in your skin, where they break off and release chemicals that irritate the skin. While annoying for dog walkers and gardeners, there’s no doubt that they are fascinating for macro photographers!

We highly recommend grabbing (not literally) some stinging nettles to photograph up close. The formations of spikes adds to the regular fun that can be had with leaf photography!

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