Taking Macro Photos on The Cheap
AKA How You Should NOT Take Macro Photos

What you will need:
1) An SLR Camera (something with a removable lens)
2) The body cap that your camera came with
3) A small peice of string
4) Tape (scotch... or something that won't leave residue)

Step 1: Hollow your body cap

Take your body cap and cut out the inside portion. Be sure you don't ruin the little "wings" that mount to the camera body.
BE SURE YOU CLEAN OFF ANY PLASTIC SHAVINGS OR SMALL BITS OF PLASTIC. YOU CAN RUIN YOUR EXPENSIVE CAMERA IF ANY SMALL PEICES GET INTO THE MECHANICS.

Step 2: Tape your body cap to the lens

Take your newly opened body cap and tape it to your lense. Tape it so the part of the cap that normally mounts to the camera is facing outwards from the end of your lens.

Step 3: Tape the lens aperture open

Now you need to take your peice of string and tape it to the lens so it is holding the aperture open. The aperture is the iris that varies the amount of light getting into the camera. If you do not open the aperture you will have to jack up the ISO and increase the exposure length.

You do not have to open the aperture all the way. The more the aperture is closed, the greater your depth of field. Depth of field is basically how much of your image is in focus. This is very important for macro photography.

Don't pull the string so it's very tight. OBVIOUSLY, you can ruin your aperture mechanism by doing so. You only need to tape the string so it holds the aperture open; no more and no less.

Here is the aperture mechanism:

Taping the aperture open:

Aperture fully opened:

Aperture partly opened to increase DOF:

Important Considerations

Lets think about this...
You're using TAPE, to hold an expensive lens onto your camera.
THIS WILL NOT HOLD FOR MORE THAN A FEW HOURS.
This is truly a HACK way to take macro photos, and should not be considered a long term solution.
YOUR LENS CAN AND WILL FALL OFF AT ANY TIME. If you use some kind of ultra strong tape (which I don't recommend) you will probably have adhesive residue stuck on your lens.
If you do this process, YOU ARE DOING SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. UNDERSTAND THAT YOU MAY DAMAGE YOUR CAMERA AND OR LENS.

Step 4: take awesome photos

I captured these stunning images with this setup: