Photography Links
awild | August 17, 2008
Tetramorium sericeiventre
2008, Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens, MT-24EX twin flash
One nice thing about my recent trip to South Africa was that I could revisit the same species I shot on my last visit in 2003. Only, with decent equipment this time around. Check out the difference between the SLR (above) and the little coolpix digicam (below).
Tetramorium sericeiventre
2003, Nikon Coolpix 995, onboard flash
An obvious contrast is the stronger magnification of the SLR system, but I'd hold that the most important aspect is the flexibility of the off-camera flash, allowing for tight control over…
awild | August 16, 2008
Dorylus helvolus, KZN, South Africa
Last night the internet arrived at our new house. I've celebrated the occasion by tackling the backlog of photo uploads.
Over at myrmecos.net the South Africa photos are starting to go up. The first batch covers Dorylus helvolus, a subterranean predatory ant. Meanwhile, the fine art galleries at www.alexanderwild.com have also been beefed up with new material, including some stylized ant portraiture and the first of the Illinois scarabs.
On an unrelated note, Jo-anne has been sending along updates from the famous Ant Course in Venezuela. Word is that…
awild | August 15, 2008
Pelidnota punctata - Grapevine Beetle
Champaign, Illinois
Here it is: the first insect I've photographed since moving to Illinois last week. I've been posting a lot of scarab beetles recently, but can you blame me? They're so pretty.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 sec, indirect strobe in white box.
awild | August 12, 2008
This shot wasn't too difficult. The ant was following my finger about menacingly, as seen here, so I only needed to lift my hand just above the viewing frame to get her to pose.
awild | August 8, 2008
Cicindela lemniscata - White-Lined Tiger Beetle
Arizona, USA
This one is for Ted, who has an excellent blog about Tiger Beetles.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper.
awild | August 1, 2008
Strategus aloeus - Ox Beetles, female (left) and male
Arizona, USA
Impressive pronotal horns mark the male in these sexually dimorphic scarabs. Strategus aloeus is found in the southern United States from Florida to Arizona.
photo details, top photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/9, 1/200sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box
bottom photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/14, 1/200sec, ISO 200, indirect strobe in a white box
awild | July 31, 2008
Harpegnathos saltator - Jumping Ant
I thought I would have to travel all the way to India (the horror!) to photograph one of the world's most charming insects, the jumping ant Harpegnathos saltator. But I recently learned that myrmecologist Juergen Liebig, a professor at Arizona State University, maintains dozens of captive colonies in his lab in Phoenix. Juergen studies these ants' rather unusual behavior. Unlike most ants that show a clear division between reproductive queens and sterile workers, Harpegnathos workers can mate and produce fertile offspring, leading to soap opera-style…
awild | July 30, 2008...documented in detail at the Photoshop Disasters Blog.
The number of major corporations guilty of egregious image manipulation errors is surprising.
awild | July 25, 2008
Cotinus mutabilis - Fig Beetle
Tucson, Arizona
A few weeks ago we started noticing these giant green scarabs flying about Tucson. They're about the same size and clumsiness in the air as carpenter bees, but brilliant green in color. My wife- a bit of a bug geek herself- was given a few for her birthday last year by one of her customers at the market where she works.
If you ever encounter a fig beetle larva, be prepared for something truly weird. They ignore the fact that they have legs and walk upside-down, lying on their backs, their little legs pointed up.
photo details, top photo:…
awild | July 21, 2008Oecophylla weaver ants are exceptionally cooperative subjects for photography, allowing for plenty of experimentation with lighting while the ants preen and pose. While developing the photographs from South Africa I discovered that strong backlighting allows a crystal-clear view of the tracheal system:
Oecophylla longinoda, St. Lucia, KZN, South Africa
The tracheae are visible as dark canals running through the body. These connect to the outside air in a series of circular spiracles and are essentially the lungs of the insect, channeling oxygen to the respiring cells and carrying away…
awild | July 18, 2008
Apatides fortis (Bostrichidae), the Horned Powder-Post Beetle
Tucson, Arizona
These robust wood-boring beetles have been common at my blacklight in early monsoon season. Good thing, too. We collected a few for the Beetle Tree of Life study, and they've been one of the easier beetles to produce DNA sequence for our project.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/14, 1/250 sec
indirect strobe in a white box
awild | July 17, 2008
Leptogenys attenuata
In spite of the southern winter, the coastal forests of Kwazulu-Natal had plenty of ant activity to keep me occupied last week. In addition to the beautiful Polyrhachis I posted earlier, here are portraits of a few of the species I encountered.
Crematogaster tricolor
Platythyrea cooperi
Myrmicaria natalensis
Plectroctena mandibularis
Anochetus faurei
Oecophylla longinoda (African Tailor Ant)
Cataulacus brevisetosus
Dorylus helvolus
Pachycondyla (Bothroponera) mlanjiensis
Atopomyrmex mocquerysi
Pheidole megacephala (Big-Headed Ant)
Solenopsis geminata (…
awild | July 17, 2008Among the more charismatic ants I saw during my visit to South Africa was a silver Polyrhachis that seemed all too happy to pose for me. With such an unusually cooperative subject, I was able to experiment with several different arrangements of the flash heads on my MT-24EX twin flash. Compare these two shots, differing only in the placement of one of the two heads:
Polyrhachis schlueteri, St. Lucia, KZN, South Africa
The top photo is the clear winner. The MT-24EX has detachable heads, and what I did here was remove one of them and hand-hold it under the leaf, facing upward at the ant.…
awild | July 14, 2008While I was away the Photoshelter blog posted a recent interview I did with Allen Murabayashi, the company's CEO. You can read it here, and I've also pasted it below the fold.
I don't market my photos through an agency- my own sites work pretty well- but if I did, Photoshelter is one of the first companies I'd consider. They've navigated the emerging internet market more successfully than the traditional photo agency giants like Getty and Corbis, but unlike the microstocks they also pay their photographers decently.
Alex Wild is a biologist at the University of Arizona with a doctorate in…
awild | July 13, 2008
Sunset over the St. Lucia Estuary
I am happy to report that both parts of my trip- ant photography in the coastal forests of St. Lucia and the ICE conference in Durban- were a success. I'll try to put up a few posts in the coming week about both.
A brief note about this photo: I used a 2-stop hard graduated filter to darken the upper 2/3 of the image, and because the sky lacked clouds I stood under a tree to add interest. Skies present interesting photographic challenges when the weather is clear, as it was for most of my brief Africa trip.
awild | July 8, 2008
After a stroll through a Palo Verde woodland in the Tucson mountains I returned to my car to find this male ant sitting on the roof. I didn't immediately recognize it, and several hours later, after I figured it out, I wished I'd stuck around to looks for queens. What is it? I'll provide the answer next week.
Update: the answer!
awild | July 4, 2008
Chrysina (=Plusiotis) gloriosa - The Glorious Beetle
Huachuca Mountains, Arizona
Few of Arizona's beetles are as spectacular as the jewel scarabs in the genus Chrysina. They are most readily collected by blacklight (as in Kojun's handful o' beetles) in juniper forests in the weeks following the arrival of the monsoon.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
Indirect strobe fired into white box
awild | June 28, 2008
A close-in crop of the body:
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec exposure
awild | June 27, 2008
Yesterday's unexpectedly intense monsoon storms brought several inches of rain and flash floods to Tucson. Many of our desert ants cue their mating flights with the onset of the summer rains, and this morning the Forelius were flying, congregating in dense swarms that twirled and twisted above the desert floor.
Males emerge from the nest, ready to go:
photo details: (flight photos) Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/800sec exposure
(close-ups) Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec exposure, twin flash diffused through tracing…