Juicy Dinner

Well, you can truly see the process this insect uses to eat, just like a spider, I guess. Pump your dinner full of digestive juices, then suck’er dry. You can even see the bubbles inside the prey insect, an interesting shot if a bit gross.

A flash assisted shot, to separate the insect from the background. Bon Appétit!

Jim

James Longster, © 2018

Juicy Dinner

It's My Leaf

I suppose I could have hunted up the name of this fly, but since it was mostly, well completely, the eyes I was interested in, I didn’t. Roger and I finally got our cameras to do what we thought they could do, that is to resolve the facets of a bugs eyes. We have succeeded! Some bugs/insects are much tougher to get than others, at least as Roger has mentioned on his Blog, alive.

We don’t shoot dead bugs and represent them as alive, it the bug is dead, it is part of the “story” of that image. Other than one bug consuming another, every bug we shoot is alive, that makes for some bug that are just pure luck to get that shot, this was not one of them.

Jim

James Longster, © 2018

It’s my leaf, and I will sit here if I want to!

Best Seats in the House

The first time Roger and Helene stayed with us after we had moved to Ferry St, we wandered down around the Wabash. This is what we saw down near where the old Brown Street bridge used to be.

It’s just one of those HUmmm, kinda shots.

Jim

James Longster, © 2014

Seats

Blue on Blue

This is the second of my, bug eyes posts. Once again it is a Damselfly and a Blue one at that, but this one has its eyes in good focus and he was 90deg to me so all of him is in focus. This image is for the eyes, as the pixel dimensions are larger than most screens can handle.

This is one of my best Damselflies so far, though the background is less than interesting. The “EYE” is the test so far of whether or not we go an acceptable shot or not.

I think that my next step after I have gotten all the bug eyes I want (will never happen), will be Focus Stacking. A WHOLE nother world, and MUCH harder, because most bugs don’t sit still long enough to get the number of different DOF(depth of field) shots to stack. We do some of this already, when we are sure that we have gotten the eyes, and conditions do allow for multiple shots at different DoFs.

Jim

James Longster, © 2018

Blue, on blue

Will I eat in Time?

Well after Rogers challenge to post an image for our latest escapade, I decided to go ahead and post one of my better images of that day/s adventuring.

This is of course a female Mosquito, the eyes of which are very,Very had to get, without cheating, anesthetizing, or killing then shooting. I saw this one hanging under this leaf, and for some reason I had all my paraphernalia ready to go, in the time my flash could fire recharge and fire again, she had detected my CO2 and came right after me. She had not yet gotten her load of blood for egg production. I had no intent of filling the role of donor for her.

When Roger and I saw the back of the camera, and saw that at 100% we could see the facets we could not believe it. Mosquitos have some of the smallest eyes for body size I have seen in the insect world. Roger will be quick to point out how lucky I was to have everything line up as needed, at the time it was needed, I agree.

Jim

James Longster, © 2018

Will I eat in time?