CalevPhoto

Playing with bugs on flowers

This weekend I finally found the chance to get out and take some pictures, as Saturday was a very nice day.  I wandered around in my backyard for awhile, looking in the normal places, and found nothing that I hadn’t photographed several times already.  The shoot was briefly interrupted as Eitan, Nathan, and I looked for ants that we could put in their ant farm.  They were very into it but the ants we wound up using turned out to be too small as they later escaped.  We found one bigger ant, but since we couldn’t find any friends for him we let him go in place of the smaller and more plentiful ones.

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.

Continue Reading…

Insect photography as art

Recently I have been involved in discussions with some coworkers about insect photography in particular, and nature photography in general.  The statement was that, though technically very challenging, most nature photography is not “artistic”.  This goes back to the old “collectors vs. photographers” debate.  Are you someone who simply finds things and photographs them, or do you attempt to tell a a message with your photography.  The other gripe against insect photography in particular is it lacks the “I want to put it on my wall” phenomenon.  Granted, my photography has not reached this plateau yet, but I strongly differ in opinion with those who do not believe that insect photography can be artful.

Continue Reading…

The Challenge of Identifying Spiders

Recently, as I have begun investigating what little life forms live around me, I have come across a great number of spiders.  While these little eight legged friends freak my wife out tremendously, I find them fascinating and I have strived to learn more about them.  To help with this, I have begun consulting web sites and I have been reading more about spiders.  What has become immediately obvious is spiders are extremely complicated creatures.  Just in Washington State there exist 700 species of spiders!

Really, I have no hope to get every spider I find to the species level, but I would like to get a general idea for each one.  Here is a shot of a spider I took by my office recently.

At the time I took this shot, I thought that for sure someone familiar with spiders should be able to identify this one.  I could not have been further from wrong.

Continue Reading…

A new world next to building 30

A few days ago something caused me to take a path I had never taken before, leading in a direction where I had never been even interested in going.  Next to the cafeteria by the building where I work, there led a path around the building.  One day, while debating whether I should take a walk, I decided to follow it and see where it went.  Sure enough, it went around the building to the front.  I walked for a bit and then decided that it was best to get back – I had a lot of work to do.  However, on the way back I noticed something that I had never seen before.

Literally a few meters away from the path, I noticed a strange sign.  There was no path down to the side, but not much in terms of brush preventing one from taking a look, so I decided to see what it said.  What I found, sitting on the Microsoft campus in a spot where even we weren’t familiar with, was a new world that I am just beginning to explore.

Continue Reading…

The hidden world out there

As I mentioned yesterday, I took some time to photograph under one of my large camellia bushes, while the weather here is still cold.  I walked around for awhile to see if I could find something on a leaf, but I had no luck.  Therefore I decided to try the camellia bush, where I had never bothered to take shots before.  The following is a shot I took some time ago when the camellia was in bloom.

As I mentioned yesterday, there were tons of springtails.  However, there was a lot more to see with some patience.  The first thing that I was able to get a decent shot of was a tiny spider.

This spider was so tiny that I needed to take this shot at 5x.  It is so far the smallest spider that I have captured.  I actually have seen this spider multiple times before, but it tends to be rather quick and does not like being left in the open.  Therefore until this day I was not able to get a good shot of it.  Unfortunately I have really no idea what species it is.  My insect books cover spiders but I was not able to find this spider there.  I really need to find a good book on identifying spiders some day.  I would be curious to know what spiders this small eat, as even springtails seem to be a large snack.

I found a piece of wood that was laying over a fountain no longer in use and turned it over.  At first I didn’t see much, but after looking closely I wound up photographing different critters on it for the next half hour.  I kind of like the following shot, though in retrospect I think I should have framed it better.  At the time I was focusing my attention on the woodlouse and I didn’t notice the snail until it began to turn away.

I’d be curious for others’ opinions on this shot, as it sort of looks like they are checking each other out.  This woodlouse was a bit smaller than the ones I normally find, though I don’t believe I had to go to 5x to get the shot.

I found several very small moths in the area, including several on the piece of wood.  This is one of the shots I got of one.

Unfortunately some of the details are a bit blown out on it.  I’ll need to try to mask it and bring some of the details back.  This was one very small moth, and again I have no idea what species it may be.  I looked through my insect books but I was unable to find a definitive match.  I think though for the next all white subject I will need to adjust the flash compensation a bit to not blow out the details so much.

Another subject I found was a tiny see through worm.

As little I know about insects, I know even less about worms, so I won’t even try to guess what species this may be.  Still, I think it is rather cool how you can literally see right through it.  From the naked eye I thought this may be some egg at first, but when I looked at it in the camera I realized that it was a small worm.  I wish I knew more about worm anatomy to say what those little things through it are.

My final subject for this session was a tiny spider.

I really need to get a good spider book, as I was not able to find this species either.  In general it seems that the smaller species are underrepresented in the literature because most people do not notice them.  Still, I was rather surprised with the diversity I found in an area that initially seemed lifeless.

A Trip to the Manu Biosphere Part III

I find it somewhat amusing that I meant to write a single post on my trip to Manu, but I am currently on my third one and I’m not sure if I’ll finish up in this post. From yesterday’s post, we were just departing from the Cock-of-the-Rock lodge and descending from the cloud forests to the jungle basin. Someday, if I come back with a private guide, I would like to spend more time at that lodge. It was very nicely equipped – with only the Manu Wildlife Center being better, and the wildlife in that area is quite different from that in the lowlands. Early that day we stopped at the last metropolis we would see for some time – this being the biggest town for miles there.

Finally, we ditched the bus and got onto our motorized canoe, which we used for the rest of the trip.

Some people have asked me what we did for food on the trip. Actually, the food was quite good and we did not go out and grab the ‘critter of the day’. In addition to our guide, we took along a cook, pots and pans, and the food for the trip. At each lodge the cook would prepare the meal while we were out and about. We also took a driver for the boat as the river could get quite low and you really need to have someone who knows the river. The boat doesn’t look that big, but it stored quite a lot. Once while we stopped at a patch of grass for a restroom we found one of the local spiders.

This one was actually holding an egg sac underneath it and despite its appearance was not aggressive nor dangerous. Our drive pointed this out to us.

Although I do not fear spiders, I did not volunteer to do this. Neither did anyone else in our group. Our guide later mentioned to us that, though the spider was not aggressive, this wasn’t really a smart move. Spiders are quite common in Manu and you can find all types there. However, none are considered dangerous to man. We found quite a few of these spiders around our cabins wherever we went.

One night my roommate and I found a rather large spider in our shower. It crawled up towards the ceiling and we decided that it shouldn’t stop us from each taking a shower. However, that night we made sure to lock the door to the bathroom in case it decided to go exploring at night.

More annoying were the tiny spiders that would build webs across the trails. Our guide was quite short and I am rather tall (6′5″) so I kept running into the webs. It was really quite annoying – especially when I got webs in my mouth. None of the spiders were dangerous though and I was not bitten.

Many people who have never been to the rain forest think that spiders and snakes are the things to fear. This is very far from the truth. During the entire trip I only saw two snakes – a dead false coral snake that I discussed in yesterday’s post and a rather large brown snake that I was told was nonpoisonous. There are two snakes in Manu that are feared – the Bushmaster and the Fer-de-lance. Of the two, the fer-de-lance is the more aggressive but the Bushmaster is the more poisonous. Both are quite rare to come across. As for spiders, as I already mentioned they are not dangerous – even the large ones.

What are to be feared though are the ants. For those who live in the south, think fire ants but much nastier. Army ants are common there and can be quite painful if they bite – which luckily did not happen to me or anyone in our group. For this reason it is highly advisable to wear long pants in the jungle and tuck them in to your boots. When we saw army ants we would walk quickly through them, making sure to not step on any, and then shake ourselves off when we stopped seeing them.

Far more feared than the army ants is the bullet ant – considered by some to have the most painful sting of any insect in the world. These ants are about an inch long and are more solitary – you generally see one at a time. However where you see one there are often more. These ants were quite common there and we ran across them often. We did not mess with them and they did not bother us.

In terms of photography in Manu, there are three types of places where you can get photos.

1. From the canoe when going through the river and on rafts on the oxbow lakes. Here you really need a good telephoto, which I didn’t have. On a full frame camera, I plan to return some day with a 600mm telephoto and extenders. A number of animals, particularly birds and monkeys, can be found high in the trees and require a good range. Still, this is the best way to get pictures as it is relatively light out and you can get a lot of interesting animals. For a number of animals, such as capybara and giant otters, this is the only way to get photos.
2. In the jungle canopy. To be honest, the only types of shots I would bother to try for here are macro shots. While I did see a number of mammals and lizards in the jungle – such as agoutis, peccaries, and even a jaguar, they tend not to stick around for very long and you are very unlikely to have time to get a shot off. Some birds can only be found under the canopy – such as a number of manakin species, but again it is quite tough. Insects, on the other hand, are in ample supply and are much more rewarding for the time.
3. From blinds waiting for particular animals. We visited three blinds in Manu.
   1. The Cock-of-the-Rock lodge, which I mentioned yesterday
   2. The macaw clay lick – impressive for watching hundreds of macaws and thousands of green parrots congregate
   3. A tapir blind – it is actually quite rare to see a tapir, but we managed to get lucky and see one

Here’s another other poor shot I managed to get of a critter in Manu.

For those a bit challenged with their out of focus mammals, this is a capybara. Image stabilization would have been my friend there.