Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
With the imminent demise of 2011, I’ve been reviewing my photographic efforts from the year. Excluding photos from our recent Australian adventures- I’m still crunching those- I created 609 saleable images processed from over 15000 exposures. Of those, here are ones I see as the best:
[the following is a repost from the Scienceblogs network] As an insect guy, the first question I ask about any camera is: Can I shoot bugs with it? To my great disappointment, the answer for most cell phones is no. Cell phone cameras are normally fixed to focus at distances useful for party pictures and [...]
This shot may look like it came from an exotic location, but in fact I snapped it not three hours ago in our prairie garden. The sideoats grama is flowering, and its tiny blossoms are positively buzzing with miniature halictid bees, each barely half a centimenter long. photo details: Canon EOS 7D camera with a [...]
If you can get past the cheesy narration, this Nat Geo clip shows some excellent footage of Mesoamerican stingless bees:
May Berenbaum, entomologist extraordinaire, considers the modern bed bug resurgence in today’s NY Times: I had been a professor of entomology for 15 years before I saw my first live bedbug. It crawled out of a plastic film canister that had been mailed to me by a distraught student in the Boston area who had [...]
In the comments, Ted observes astutely: Okay, I have to ask – do you give your subjects a “bath” prior to photographing them? I’m thinking in particular of the caterpillar hunter – there’s not a speck of anything on him. I think I just figured out one of the keys to your superb photos. I [...]
San Francisco’s KQED has crafted a lovely video featuring the research of Bay Area myrmecologists Brian Fisher and Neil Tsutsui: QUEST on KQED Public Media. If you’ve ever wanted a behind-the-scenes peak at the ant taxonomy megasite Antweb.org, give it a click. Oh, and, the still photographs look vaguely familiar.
photo details: Canon EOS 7D camera Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens ISO 100 f/13, 1/250 sec
From some of my recent photos. Click on each to enlarge. more below the fold:
Ants are accomplished architects, but most people would never know it. That’s because ant nests are often underground and impossible to observe directly, with the consequence that we don’t know as much about ant-built structures as we do about those of the more open-nesting bees and wasps. Enter Walter Tschinkel. Walt and his students have [...]
A personal blog by Illinois-based biologist and photographer Alex Wild.
Myrmecos- derived from the ancient greek word for "ant"- hosts Alex's musings about these and other little creatures that share our planet.
Questions? Email alwild [at] myrmecos.net; or follow @Myrmecos on Twitter.
