You'll note that the photographer there is shooing with a lens that has a fairly long barrel. For the Nikkor 105mm macro lens - https://coinimaging.com/nikon_105vr.html
At 1:1, there's 15.3 cm between the front of the lens and the subject.
But if you're shooting with a rather short lens (e.g. those in the camera of a phone) then the working distance is very close.
This becomes important important when photographing insects (you'll note there are no photos of insects in that collection)
That would light it, but you don’t necessarily want every image to have “flat” lighting. It’s ok for portraits and for documenting things, but usually directional light is more interesting.
The practical working distance is why I like the four-thirds system for macro. With a 50mm 1:2 macro lens on a micro43 body you can work at a distance of 10-25cm from the lens front, so you can sneak up on bugs, and on this format you can get a useful depth of field with more than a few atoms in focus like you'd get on a larger format.
You'll note that the photographer there is shooing with a lens that has a fairly long barrel. For the Nikkor 105mm macro lens - https://coinimaging.com/nikon_105vr.html
At 1:1, there's 15.3 cm between the front of the lens and the subject.
But if you're shooting with a rather short lens (e.g. those in the camera of a phone) then the working distance is very close.
This becomes important important when photographing insects (you'll note there are no photos of insects in that collection)
Some other lenses and their working distances - https://www.kielia.de/photography/calculator/working-distanc...
The Olympus 30mm shooting as a macro lens has a working distance of 16mm (quite different than the 153mm of the Nikkor 105mm macro lens).
The "getting close" also impacts the "how do you light it" and keeping the subject out of the shadow of the camera.