The ideal background for macro photography of a nature subject is, in my opinion, completely out of focus foliage. In photographing this glass frog native to Central and South America, I had three choices to capture a background like you see here: (1) Place the frog and its perch such that the background trees were far away, say at least 50 to 100 feet, (2) shoot with a large lens aperture, or (3) place a photographic print of out of focus foliage behind the frog. By choosing the first and third options, I could still use a small aperture for sufficient depth of field. If I chose option (2), the depth of field would be too shallow and some of the frog and most of the leaf would be soft. That's not something I like in macro work. The settings for this picture were 1/6, f/11, 400 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm medium telephoto with an extension tube that allowed me to focus closely. The camera was mounted on an Induro tripod with a reallyrightstuff.com ball head.