Photography Links

The New York Times on the changing face of the photography business: Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets, have increasing opportunities to make money on photos but are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options. Professionals are also being hurt because magazines and newspapers are cutting pages or shutting altogether. âThere are very few professional photographers who, right now, are not hurting,â said Holly Stuart Hughes, editor of the magazine Photo District News. It's worth pointing out that what's…

Here's a chart I made this morning. It depicts the number of new photos tagged "insects" or "insect" uploaded over the history of the leading photo-sharing site Flickr. Note that the graph doesn't show the cumulative total of insect photos on the site; rather, it shows the increase from year-to-year. Thus, even though the rate of increase slowed in 2009, the amount of insect content is still accelerating. Interpretation of the chart is tricky. The increase may reflect several patterns: a growth in Flickr's popularity, the growth of digital photography, and a growth in overall interest in…

Arachnids (you know, spiders and mites and things) never had much of a presence in my photo galleries.  While I could chalk their absence up to an obsessive focus on formicids, the reality is that I'm mildly arachnophobic.  Photographing spiders makes me squirm, so I don't do it very often. Oddly, it really is just spiders.  I don't have any trouble with opilionids, mites, or even scorpions. And it isn't all spiders, either. I'm rather fond of salticids. But there's something about the form of some spiders that touches off a deeply instinctual revulsion. Embarrassing for an entomologist,…

...to his spectacular SEM images.

In 2009 the world's macrophotographers- both amateur and professional- continued to capture breathtaking images of the arthropod microscape.  I've been bookmarking insect photos from around the web that catch my eye, and after spending some time this week reviewing the candidates I've selected nine favorites. Wow. These are the images from fellow photographers that most captured my imagination over the past year. Together, by Jan Zajc untitled, by Bonali Giuseppe Frog beetle ready for take-off, by Alfred Preuss Ants climbing tree, by Uros Kotnik Water striders, by Clay Bolt Eyes…

National Geographic remains the world's premier showcase of nature photography. But I often wonder for how much longer. It is easy to maintain a virtual monopoly on high quality imagery when camera equipment and publishing are expensive and require a highly specialized skill set.  But neither of these things is true anymore.  Professional-quality photo equipment is broadly affordable. And numerous online venues allow anyone with an internet connection to distribute their photos for free. Consider the following fantastic arthropod photographers, all from the galleries of the free online…

Long live Myrmecos.net! By way of a replacement, the ant photos are now over at alexanderwild.com: Advantages of the new site include: Galleries can be viewed as a slide show Geo data are integrated with Google Maps (I'm still working on this) Images can be displayed at a larger size (up to 800 pixels) RSS feeds (for example: new photos) Smoother navigation Searches return relevant thumbnail images Automated commercial licensing Automated ordering of prints Images and galleries allow comments As in the old site, the ant images are accessible by taxonomic list, by natural history, by…

For those of you accessible to central Illinois, I will be hosting a free insect photography workshop next Sunday at the University of Illinois Pollinatarium.  The workshop is offered in celebration of the 3rd annual National Pollinator Week. Details are as follows: Insect Photography Workshop Free to the public 2:00 pm, June 28th, 2009 at the University of Illinois Pollinatarium (map) Bring your camera, as this is a participatory event!

dawn in the scrub I spent last week in central Florida at the Archbold Biological Station. Archbold preserves 5,000 hectares of Florida sand scrub, some of the last remaining patches of an ecosystem now largely lost to agriculture and strip malls.  The sand scrub is an odd place, a fossil beach from when sea levels were high enough to restrict peninsular Florida to a narrow sandbar.  Water runs right through the coarse sand, leaving the scrub looking much like a desert in spite of regular afternoon rains.  Cacti thrive.  It is a paradoxical place. The scrub is also remarkable for…

Eastern Treehole Mosquito My commercial gallery now has flies! Diptera photographs at alexanderwild.com I feel sort of embarassed at how few fly images I have, considering the importance of the group. That's something I'll try to remedy as we get into this summer's photography season.

"Lean on Me", by Lesley Smitheringale The Burrard-Lucas brothers held a wildlife portait competition, and the results are simply spectacular.  Click here to see the winners.

Myrmecos seems to have caught the eye of the editors at ScienceBlogs, and I've been contracted to inaugurate a new photography site for their network.  Photo Synthesis will be a rotating showcase of science imagery: The internet is home to a wealth of captivating science images, from the many microscopic components of a cell to the remote corners of the universe captured by Hubble. On Photo Synthesis, we aim to bring you the best of what's out there. Every month we will feature the work of a different photoblogger, exposing worlds both small and large, familiar and exotic. We will let the…

Solenopsis geminata, the tropical fire ant The latest upload concerns three species in the subfamily myrmicinae that have been traveling about the globe with human commerce.  Solenopsis geminata, the tropical fire ant, is the most worrying of these tramps, but the other two, Pheidole moerens and P. obscurithorax, are rather poorly known and probably merit more study than they receive.  Click to visit the gallery. Incidentally, if I'd known at the time that Solenopsis geminata confers hero status on their collectors, I'd defintely have spent more time pointing them out to everyone within…

I've created a set of desktop wallpapers to fit the newer 1680 x 1050 widescreen monitors. To put any of the following on your desktop, click on the image. Once the large version loads to your browser, right-click and select "Set as desktop background."

I've posted enough Friday Beetles that I can no longer remember which species I've already done. Some species were almost posted twice out of sheer forgetfulness.  Must be the academic scatter-brain. So to keep them all straight I've made a list.  This is mostly for my own good.  In any case, here is the Friday Beetle Directory: Adranes - Ant-Nest Beetle Onthophagus gazella - Gazelle Scarab Dineutes sublineatus - Whirligig Beetle Lutrochus - Travertine Beetle Scaphinotus petersi - Snail-eating Beetle Laccophilus pictus - Predaceous Diving Beetle Apteroloma caraboides - Snowfield Beetle…

Priacma serrata - Bleach Beetle California Priacma serrata is an enigmatic insect from the conifer forests of western North America and is one of a handful of species belonging to the relictual beetle suborder Archostemata.  It is often thought of as a "living fossil", bearing a strong resemblance to the earliest known beetles that pre-date even the dinosaurs. Males are attracted to the scent of bleach, presumably because it resembles a female pheromone, and are sometimes collected off air-drying laundry.  In spite of its unique evolutionary position, the biology of Priacma has not been…

Atta cephalotes Leafcutting ants of the genus Atta have perhaps the most complex caste systems of all the social insects.  Mature colonies contain millions of workers of varying shapes and sizes.  Here are two sisters from opposing ends of the spectrum. photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper

A young adult Comperia merceti, a parasitoid wasp in the family Encyrtidae, emerges from the egg case of its cockroach host. photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper

Pyramica ludovici - KZN, South Africa I am still working through the South African ant photos I took this July.  Progress is slow.  I'm not terribly familiar with the African fauna, and the species have to be keyed out and checked against the literature so I can post images with the proper identification. All the same, I'm not 100%. What I've learned in the process is that Brian Taylor's Ants of Africa site is indispensable.  The interface is a bit web-1.0-clunky, but the content is exactly what I need.  This morning I keyed the above Pyramica to the pan-African species P. ludovici in…