CalevPhoto

Our friend the garden centipede

One of the easiest bugs to find in our gardens is the garden centipede.  These centipedes are among the more brightly colored denizens under rocks and logs but can be quite tricky to photograph as they do not stay still.

While some tropical centipedes possess very potent venom, the centipedes in our gardens are harmless and of no danger.  Instead, they are very beneficial for the garden as they are great predators – taking care of many bugs we would prefer to not have around.  You can find more information about them here.

I find them among the more fascinating things in the garden and I can find them nearly 100% of the time.  Only pill bugs are easier to find. Continue Reading…

A few shots for the weekend

Not much to say today, but I thought I would discuss some more photos I took by my building at work.

I found this small centipede in some leaf litter I was going through and decided that was not the most photogenic place for it.  Therefore I found this flower nearby and placed it on top.  The centipede seemed rather confused and wandered around the flower for a bit, before I placed it back in the leaf litter.  It’s probably the equivalent of someone putting us an Mars – we would likely wonder – “where the heck are we?” (note: I am assuming whoever did it was kind enough to give us a space suit or else we wouldn’t have much time to think).

Continue Reading…

Experimenting with insect shots

After reading Myrmecos’s blog on insect photography techniques I decided to try a few of the techniques for myself, particularly photographing on white paper.  So I took a sheet of my kids’ construction paper and brought it outside.  The weather here in the Pacific Northwest still isn’t great – and I managed to find a break in the rain we have been getting recently.  Still, it was cold and windy and several times the wind blew away my paper (once with a poor pill bug still attached).  I tried stabilizing the paper with rocks, but they tended to warp the paper too much.

The experience was more of a learning experience than getting great shots.  The main lesson that I learned was that the flash needs to be compensated for the paper.  As the light meter in the camera strives to expose the image gray, I need to compensate with the flash exposure.  The next time I will try putting it at +1.  Luckily, I take every shot in RAW so I was able to easily adjust the exposure without losing too much of the quality of the shots.  My first attempt was with a millipede that I found.

I would have liked to remove the dirt in the middle of the millipede, but I was worried about hurting it.  While picking the millipede out, I found another little critter that I still need to look up.  Unfortunately none of my shots came out well of it, but this is the best one I could find.  Whatever it was, it was tiny as I needed to take this shot at 5x.

My next victim was a slug.  Here I think for the next time I need to come up with a better background.  Ideally it would be nice to find something that can expose the slime trail. Also, I need to figure out a way to remove the dirt without damaging the slug.

Of course, pill bugs are the easiest to experiment with because they are so plentiful.  I haven’t photographed one in awhile because I have grown rather bored of them, but I decided to get a closeup of this one.

My final experiment of the day was a centipede.  This little bugger was quite tough as they move very quickly and it didn’t like the exposed state of the paper at all.  After convincing it for awhile that it wasn’t about to get off the paper without a few shots it stood still enough for me to get some shots.

Altogether I feel it was a worthwhile experiment.  I will likely try submitting a few of these to the microstock sites- you never know.  The next time though I may try to find some more natural backgrounds like leaves.

The case of the mystery eggs

Recently, while photographing bugs in my back yard, I came across a number of eggs. These are some images of the eggs I found.

I immediately wonder whose eggs these were. There were several insects in the area, so I tried a process of elimination.

Ants – It is well known that ants lay their eggs within their colonies, where they are tended to by other ants. They do not leave their eggs just sitting on the ground. Therefore, I felt it safe to assume these were not ant eggs.

Woodlice – According to Wikipedia, woodlice keep the eggs on the upper side of their body. If they are that small, then they are certainly bigger than these eggs. While there were woodlice around where I found these eggs, they don’t fit the bill.

Spiders – Spiders usually keep their eggs either on their underside or in silk bundles called egg sacs. These clearly did not look like spider eggs.

Centipedes – There were a number of centipedes near where I took these shots. The following is a picture of one.

I must admit that I had no idea how the centipede lays its eggs, but after searching Live images I found the following image – http://www.myrmecos.net/amblyopone/centipede.jpg

These eggs looks suspiciously like those in the picture, and I now suspect that the eggs I found are indeed centipede eggs. Unlike the tropical varieties of centipedes, the garden centipedes we have here are harmless to humans so I am not worried by their presence. Still, I am very tempted to set up a terrarium with the eggs to show my kids, but I am afraid I would end up messing something up and the eggs won’t hatch.