But again, due to the particularly cold weather that we have experienced this year, I have been unable to find anything apart from a few very tiny spiders in the wild.
When I undertook my book-making module at the same time two years ago, the weather was much warmer and I had a huge amount of insects to study in my own back garden.
I have a very small collection of deceased insects that I have collected from my garden last summer and I decided to experiment with these using the focus-stacking technique.
Here are some of my initial results:
Fig-1
Fig-2
Fig-3
Fig-4
Fig-5
Fig-6
Figure 1 is made up from almost 100 worker bees !
A very good friend of mine is a bee-keeper. I explained my project idea to him and asked him if he had any recently deceased bees in his hive that I could have expecting that he may have one or two.
I was incredibly surprised when I was presented with a plastic takeaway food container containing over 100 recently deceased bees!
The bees in figure 1 were individually very small and even with the focus-stacking technique, I found them very difficult to photograph.
The slightly larger specimen of bee in figure 2 was much easier to photograph.
The wasp in figures 4,5 and 6 instantly made a very big impression on me.
In figure 5, I think that the wasp takes on a very human-like characteristic in the way that it is photographed as a portrait and I feel that this is further demonstrated in figure 6.
By cropping the image really tight so it is almost a 'head and shoulders' shot, I now see this as resembling a portrait of a human being.
This definitely portrays the wasp in a completely different manner and now really does begin to portray the qualities of a portrait image.
This has really made me think !
Now that I think that my initially proposed idea about photographing the life-cycles of butterflies is no longer feasible to due the continuing unseasonal weather and the fact that this means I cannot find specimens in the wild to photograph, would it make sense to continue to use preserved specimens such as the wasp and the bees?
This would completely eliminate the variable element of further disruption to my project from any more bad weather and having ''captive'' subjects to work with would surely give me a much greater degree of control in the photography of these specimens and I think that this will allow me to significantly develop my photographic techniques in this, one of my favourite areas of photography.
I feel that the early results from these test-images are very positive indeed and could have scope for a fascinating body of work !
I have always been fascinated by the 'character' of an insect's face since I captured the face of the bee in figure 10 of my Initial Ideas post.
I tried to show this in my insect photography book Another World which is mentioned in a previous post of the same name.
The ethos of this book was to afford the viewer, should they so wish to be able to look at an insect in much greater detail than would ever be possible with the naked eye.
To afford the viewer a different perspective into the world of insects through my use of macro-photography.
Traditionally, we always look down at insects as we are much bigger than them but I have always been absolutely fascinated with the idea of showing this fascinating world from a different perspective.
I would like to to continue this line of study using the technique of focus-stacking.
I would now propose to try to capture images of the insects in the same way that I would take a portrait photograph of a person in a studio with controlled lighting.
To demonstrate the character of an insect in a truly unique way that we very seldom see.
From my initial test images of the wasp, I also think that the images would be incredibly striking if they were presented in as big a format as possible when they are printed.
We always look at tiny insects like these with the same perspective of looking down at them from a great hight.
I wonder what the images would look like if they were printed in a large format say A2 or A1 and mounted at eye-level in an exhibition display.
This would be a fascinating way of altering the traditional perspective of how we look at insects.
Would this give the effect that the insects are now looking down at us instead?
I think that this is a fascinating idea for an exhibition and although I think that someone must have thought of this before, it is not something that I have ever seen and would be very interested to see what I can find from my research..
This has really made me think !
Now that I think that my initially proposed idea about photographing the life-cycles of butterflies is no longer feasible to due the continuing unseasonal weather and the fact that this means I cannot find specimens in the wild to photograph, would it make sense to continue to use preserved specimens such as the wasp and the bees?
This would completely eliminate the variable element of further disruption to my project from any more bad weather and having ''captive'' subjects to work with would surely give me a much greater degree of control in the photography of these specimens and I think that this will allow me to significantly develop my photographic techniques in this, one of my favourite areas of photography.
I feel that the early results from these test-images are very positive indeed and could have scope for a fascinating body of work !
I have always been fascinated by the 'character' of an insect's face since I captured the face of the bee in figure 10 of my Initial Ideas post.
I tried to show this in my insect photography book Another World which is mentioned in a previous post of the same name.
The ethos of this book was to afford the viewer, should they so wish to be able to look at an insect in much greater detail than would ever be possible with the naked eye.
To afford the viewer a different perspective into the world of insects through my use of macro-photography.
Traditionally, we always look down at insects as we are much bigger than them but I have always been absolutely fascinated with the idea of showing this fascinating world from a different perspective.
I would like to to continue this line of study using the technique of focus-stacking.
I would now propose to try to capture images of the insects in the same way that I would take a portrait photograph of a person in a studio with controlled lighting.
To demonstrate the character of an insect in a truly unique way that we very seldom see.
From my initial test images of the wasp, I also think that the images would be incredibly striking if they were presented in as big a format as possible when they are printed.
We always look at tiny insects like these with the same perspective of looking down at them from a great hight.
I wonder what the images would look like if they were printed in a large format say A2 or A1 and mounted at eye-level in an exhibition display.
This would be a fascinating way of altering the traditional perspective of how we look at insects.
Would this give the effect that the insects are now looking down at us instead?
I think that this is a fascinating idea for an exhibition and although I think that someone must have thought of this before, it is not something that I have ever seen and would be very interested to see what I can find from my research..
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