CalevPhoto

Who said aphids can’t be funny?

I must admit that among the more hilarious pictures in the world, insects are rarely mentioned.  However, once in awhile I do find a rather amusing shot and more often than not it occurs with aphids.  I do not believe that aphids consider themselves to be amusing, but once in awhile I catch an aphid in a pose that does look a bit strange.

Although aphids stay rather still for most shots, they are not one of the easier insects to photograph.  For one, they are extremely small and often require a magnification of 5x for a good shot.  This means that the viewfinder is extremely dark and the lens is shaky.  The also do move, so tracking can be slightly tricky at times.

Here is an aphid family portrait.

Amazingly, an adult ladybug can eat up to sixty of these a day!  I am currently looking for some lady bugs, as Nelya prefers that the aphids stay away from her roses, but I won’t let her use insecticides on them.

While they certainly aren’t a beneficial insect, they do provide some amusement!

Time for some bees

During the recent warm weather, I figured it would be nice to get out there and take some bee shots.  This also gave me a chance to work with my 180mm macro, which has lately been ignored in favor of the MP-E 65.  While the MP-E 65 is an amazing lens, for things like bees the 180L is far more appropriate.

I had hoped to catch a bee in flight, but alas the only shots I got were too OOF.  I could have probably made my life easier by not trying to get the shot at 1:1, but then it wouldn’t have looked as interesting!  From past experience, I have found it’s better to try to take an amazing shot and fail than to take several mediocre shots.

Continue Reading…

The release of the queens

Several weekends ago, my wife asked me to weed in our backyard.  I obliged, but on my way to get some equipment, I noticed something very unusual in the backyard.  The carpenter ant colony was releasing their queens and males.

First, I am not a myrmecologist and my knowledge of ants and carpenter ants comes from reading several books and observing them in my backyard.  Therefore, some of the information below may be incorrect.  If you know some of it to be false, please let me know and I will gladly correct it.

To be honest, I’m not sure if all of them were queens, all were males, or if there was a mix, but I suspect the latter.  Their clearly were smaller winged ants and larger ones.  I watched and photographed the phenomenon for a good hour.  While in my opinion none of the shots are great on their own, altogether the tell a very interesting story.

Continue Reading…

Progression in macro insect photography

For a fun post, I thought I would cover the progression that a macro photography typically makes.  This covers both where I have started as well as where I hope to go.

Stage 1

In this stage, you can recognize what insect the photo is of.  With these shots, you feel it is extremely cool that you caught the insect on camera.  What you miss is that the framing may be awful, the insect is out of focus, and the lighting may be poor.

Here is a good example from when I first bought my camera.  You can see that this is a fly, but it is looking the wrong way, is too small for this shot, and should not be centered in the viewfinder.  The focus could also be improved.

Continue Reading…

Tips for focusing in macro

One of the single biggest problems new macro photographers have is the issue of focusing.  This is particularly evident in insect shots, where most of them are a bit out of focus.  In this post, I will provide some tips for focusing.

First, if you are using autofocus at all when shooting macro, turn it off.  In macro, when you change the focus using the focus ring, you are actually changing the magnification.  Generally, you care what the magnification is on a given shot. The camera, on the other hand, has no idea. Therefore, do not let the camera do this for you.  Set the magnification yourself (most macro lenses have it printed on the barrel) and focus by moving towards and away from the subject.

Continue Reading…

Why I’m no fun at barbecues

Last weekend some friends of ours had us over for a barbecue.  Their property is rather wooded and I had my camera with me from a recent real estate shoot.  Of course, I was curious, so I took a little stroll to see what I could find.

I noticed that there were quite a few flies that were hanging out on ferns.  When I approached them, they did not flinch too much so I knew that I had a good thing going.  I ran back and grabbed my camera to get some shots.

Continue Reading…

That does look a bit like a flea!

While photographing last week, I found a shiny green beetle that was kind enough to let me get some shots of it.  I found it curled up and hiding in a plant stem and managed to annoy it enough that it started walking around.

When it came time to identify this beetle, I didn’t have much hope.  After all, there are thousands of “shiny green beetles” out there and I didn’t have too much hope of figuring out what this is.

To my surprise, I think I do know what this is.  It looks a lot like a flea beetle (family chrysomelidae, subfamily alticinae).  I am not 100% sure, but it does look awfully like a flea from the front – doesn’t it?

Continue Reading…

Time for a weevil

I’ve always had somewhat of a soft spot for the weevils that are common here around Seattle.  Sure, they are pests – but up close they kind of look like little dogs.

I have seen these a number of times around here but interestingly in many of the cases the weevils were dead.  This one was alive and moving around – probably having a good meal too.

Continue Reading…

What are these ants doing?

While taking pictures last week, I came across several ants traveling along the stem of a bush. I tried to get a good shot of one crawling along the thin limbs, but I just couldn’t get a good shot.  After some time, I became curious about what they were doing.  When I took a closer look, I was even more puzzled.

I have some suspicions about what was going on, but the truth is I don’t really know.  There were several of these “bumps” on the bush and the ants were traveling from one to the other.  There were perhaps five ants in total that I saw.

Continue Reading…

Scorpions in the Pacific Northwest!

This weekend, we were invited over to a barbecue at some of our friends house.  I had my camera along, as I had earlier photographed one of my wife’s listings, and their property was a bit wooded.  Of course, I could not resist taking out my camera to see what I could find.

While waiting near a fern where I had noticed some fly activity, a small bug caught my eye.  I decided to photograph it to see what it was and was quite surprised with the result.

Continue Reading…