Photography Links
awild | January 18, 2008
"I went out collecting with Albert Way of Trinity, who in after years became a well-known archaeologist; also with H. Thompson, afterwards a leading agriculturalist, chairman of a great railway, and a Member of Parliament. It seems therefore that a taste for collecting beetles is some indication of future success in life."
- Charles Darwin
Cactus Longhorn Beetle, Moneilema sp.
Tucson, Arizona
details: Canon 100mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/20, 1/2 sec, ISO 400
camera on tripod, natural light
levels adjusted in…
awild | January 10, 2008
Mallophorina sp. - Robber Fly
Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona
details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
f/13, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
Flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop
awild | January 9, 2008People occasionally ask why I don't assign my photos a Creative Commons license. Dan Heller explains. And adds a horror story here.
The short of it is, while Creative Commons was established with the best of intentions it is easily abused in the photographic setting. Users unknowingly open themselves up to large legal risks, and I find photo licensing by traditional means to be both more secure and more professional.
awild | January 7, 2008
Common caricatures of Darwinian evolution evoke nature as a brutal force, one of ruthless competition in which the strongest prevail. In truth evolutionary processes can be much more nuanced. Under a wide array of conditions, species find Darwinian advantage in cooperative relationships.
Some of the most striking cases of evolutionary partnerships involve the planet's dominant primary producers, the plants, and the most abundant insects, the ants. Ants are exceptional predators, and several groups of plants have figured out that by housing and feeding resident ant colonies they gain a…
awild | December 29, 2007Photos posted to myrmecos.net rarely go straight from the camera to the web. Through some combination of errors related to exposure and the innate properties of digital sensors, raw images can be a surprisingly poor match to what is seen through the viewfinder. Raw images are often relatively flat in appearance, with colors that are shifted or off-hue. For instance, Canon cameras by default impart a warm reddish hue to their files that is especially apparent in macrophotography. The nice thing about raw files, and indeed the main reason for using them, is that they are malleable enough to…
awild | December 16, 2007
Nephila sp. Giant Silk Spider
Panama
details: Canon 100mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/2.8, 1/200 sec, ISO 400
handheld, natural light
levels adjusted in Photoshop
awild | December 15, 2007
Leafcutter ants are the most conspicuous insects in Central and South America. Every photographer who happens across their bustling trails seems to take pictures of them. The world really does not need any more photos of leafcutter ants, but I can't help myself. They're pretty. My latest attine indulgences can be viewed here:
New Photos at Myrmecos.net
awild | December 13, 2007In an earlier post about flash diffusion, I wrote about camera flash being a necessity of the trade-off between depth of field and shutter speed. Most insect photographers- myself included- work hard to improve the depth of field in our photographs, trying to bring as much of our diminutive subjects into focus as possible. This means we use a lot of flash.
However, that's not the only way to take insect photos. If one is happy to throw depth of field to the wind, one can dispense with the need for flash and produce photos from the ambient light. The effect is dramatic. One doesn't get…
awild | December 11, 2007Light posting over the last couple days, I'm afraid. Our kitten Mingus came down with a little kitty fever this morning of 106º (That's 41ºC for the Fahrenheit- impaired) and is spending the night in the pet hospital, enough of a distraction to derail my blogging schedule.
Don't despair, though, there is freshy bloggy material on the way. I've been writing drafts on a number of photography topics in the background. Things to come include:
Image post-processing (what happens after a photo is taken)
The importance of backdrop
Photographing uncooperative insects
Cameras and lenses for…
awild | December 9, 2007Flash is a necessary evil in insect photography. This necessity is due to two unfortunate traits shared by most insects: small size and stubborn unwillingness to sit still for the camera. These traits confound each other in a way that renders insect photography uniquely challenging. Small subjects need to be close to the lens, placing them squarely in the zone where depth of field becomes razor-thin. Depth of field can be increased by using a small aperture, but that restricts the amount of light reaching the sensor. With so little light entering the camera, a proper exposure requires…
awild | December 6, 2007
The Saguaro might, one could fancy, be a tree designed by someone who had never seen a tree.
-Donald Culross Peattie, 1950
awild | December 5, 2007
Bombus impatiens
details: Canon 100mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
bees on plain white paper
f/14, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
Canon 550EX speedlite flash, bounced off white paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop
awild | December 3, 2007
Aglyptacros sp., Tiphiid wasp, California
details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
wasp on plain white paper
f/13, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
MT-24EX twin flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop
awild | December 2, 2007
A few months ago I started playing about with the placement of the flash unit, and almost immediately hit on a new favorite trick. When lit from behind, insects look even more zingy than usual. Their translucent bodies glow, they are ringed with little halos, and they stand out dramatically against the background. Below the fold are some samples:
Backlighting involves two major elements. The first is a relatively high-intensity light shining directly on the subject from the opposite direction of the camera. This light gives translucent insects their glow and provides the halo…
awild | December 1, 2007
Colliuris sp. long-necked ground beetle, Arizona
details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
beetle on plain white paper
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
MT-24EX twin flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop
awild | November 30, 2007
If I had to pick a favorite myrmicine ant, I'd go with the heavily armored Neotropical genus Cephalotes. These arboreal ants are typically thought of as rainforest canopy dwellers, but we have a desert species here in Arizona, Cephalotes rohweri, that is the northernmost species in an otherwise tropical genus. They nest in abandoned beetle burrows in the dead wood of living Palo Verde trees.
Earlier this month, myrmecologist Scott Powell was in town to scope out a potential research project on our local populations. Scott has been studying how the nesting ecology of these ants…
awild | November 29, 2007
Once, I showed the above photograph to an expert on ground beetles. His only comment: "That looks dead".
It wasn't dead, I had merely stuck it in the fridge to cool it down enough to sit still for a shot or two. I had spent the previous 20 minutes chasing the darn thing around the living room. Like many ground beetles, it was a fast and an uncooperative subject, and in frustration I fell back to the insect photographer's old standby. The fridge.
Don't chill the bugs. Chilled animals don't act normally, they get their limbs into strange positions, and they often carry a tell-tale residue…
awild | November 27, 2007
details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens, f/11, 1/200 sec, with diffuse flash.