After satisfying the kids’ ant curiosity, I began to think about choosing better backgrounds for some of the insects.  As we have a number of flowers in bloom, I decided to try that out.  My first subject was an earwig that I found.

Unfortunately my first experiment didn’t work out at all.  As Nelya acutely observed, earwigs ‘freak out’ when you get near them.  Earwigs feel safe underneath something and definitely feel exposed out in the open.  Therefore the top of a flower was not the ideal place and it quickly wiggled away.  Eventually I gave up and let it go about its business.

I decided to try something easier and quickly settled on a rolled up pillbug that I found.  For a background, I chose a yellow primrose that looked large enough to hold it.

Admittedly, the shot isn’t very interesting.  Perhaps yellow was a poor choice, but more likely the case is a rolled up pillbug (also called a roly-poly) isn’t the most interesting subject.  I waited patiently and soon it unrolled and figured out where it was.

Again, I think this picture suffers from the fact that the subject isn’t that interesting.  A bit more interesting was what happened when the pillbug attempted to get down from the primrose.

I like this shot much better than those where it is on the primrose, showing sometimes the best shot isn’t the exact one you thought of.  I thought of trying to get more shots like this, but I figured I had annoyed the pill bug enough and let it go on its way.  They are rather common in the yard so I could have gotten another one, but I’m happy with the shot I got.

My next subject was a spider that I found behind a bag of dirt.  This type of spider is very common around our yard.  I think it is called a sac spider as the eye arrangement matches the books.  I found a nice purple and yellow primrose and set it on there.  Luckily, the spider was very patient that day for getting shots.

I’m not sure which shot I like better.  This one or one I got of it at an angle.

The angled shot follows the rule of thirds a bit better, though the purple part of the flower maybe takes a bit from the spider.  I showed both shots to Nelya and she said both were good shots, but don’t dare ever hang one on the wall.

Overall I think the experiment was successful, as these shots look a bit better than the standard spider shots I usually get.  Now if I can just find a nice looking crab spider I can really get a nice shot.

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However, a certain little insect decided that it wanted its photo taken and settled down right next to my shoot.  Perhaps it had heard that I was photographing insects in the area and wanted a portrait.  Who knows, but I was unable to resist the temptation to photograph it.

To be honest,  I haven’t spent much time trying to identify it.  It certainly looks like a midge, similar to those I blogged about some time ago.  This one stayed quite still for me, so I decided to try getting it in a dew drop.  Unfortunately there were no dew drops with a proper angle that I could have gotten the shot.  I tried to move one to the proper position but failed miserably at the attempt.  Instead, I decided to move the primrose behind the midge and see how that would turn out.

Personally I think this helped the shot, and I may try it again in the future.  The red of the primrose may have been a bit too strong here though.  I also think the two blades of grass are a bit distracting.  I tried to remove them when shooting but I was too worried I would scare away the midge so I left them.  I would be curious to hear other opinions – did the background help or hurt the midge shot?

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Still, I decided it was time to play around with Photoshop and see what I could do.

One thing that has really torn me has been whether to try out focus stacking.  Last week I sent out a link to a very well known photographer who uses focus stacking with his dew drops.  Interestingly, most of my fellow photographers seemed to think the technique made the shots look too fake.  I have yet to try focus stacking, and I did not try it last weekend.  I think I prefer the natural look a bit better – though in the future I may give it a try so I can see the results for myself.

This day I decided to try playing with black and white images.  I almost never use black and white in photos.  While I agree it does significantly improve a number of photos – I generally prefer color myself.  I decided to try juxtaposing a black and white image with a part of the image in color – as I have seen several very effective photos that do this.  This was my first attempt.

I rather liked this shot, but my wife hated it.  Her feeling was this shot is too fake (of course! It’s Photoshopped!) and asked that I make the following one.

She liked this one much better, though I’m not sure I like it.  I rather prefer the first black and white juxtaposition over the second one.  What do you think?

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