Subsequent Visits To The Museum.

My second visit to the Museum was on Friday 19th April 2013 between 10.30 am and 

5.00 pm.

I was met by Dmitri in the reception of the Manchester Museum and he took me up to the Entomology Department.

I had printed an image of the Hornet and the close-up of the Cockroach's legs from my initial visit in A3. I wanted to show him how my initial images had worked and to try to get some feedback from him as his input to the project as a professional Entomologist, to me, would be invaluable in the development of my project.

He was really impressed by my initial result and said that it was one of the best that he had ever seen !

This was an incredible compliment. From someone who has worked in this field at the very highest level for 10 years to say this about my work after my very first attempt was a real honour and inspired me to make this project as much as a success as possible.

From the success of the Hornet, he showed me part of their wasp collection as we thought that photographing more wasps was the way to go.

After spending a fascinating hour looking through the drawers in one of the old wooden cabinets that is home to the wasp collection. I found this tropical wasp and thought that it looked amazing !

It was easily the biggest wasp that I have ever seen at almost 3 inches accross.

Looking at it whilst in the box, its face looked fascinating so I decided that it would be my next subject.

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I photographed it from the top first as in Figure 1 above.

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I tried a frontal shot as in figure 2. But made a complete mess of the lighting. I am not sure exactly what went wrong?

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In figure 3, I re-shot the face of the wasp from much closer. But after I finished taking the images and rendering them, I was not impressed with the final result.

There is not enough distinction with the different elements of the face. They are all very similar in their tonal values and I did not think that this made an interesting enough subject.

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 I discussed this with Dmitri and he agreed that it did not work as well as we both would have liked.

He suggested a more European type of Hornet that has a much more traditional black and yellow colour pattern.

I spent the rest of the day photographing 4 different hornets of a similar size and type from many different angles to see what worked best.

I really like the level of detail that I have been able to achieve in Figure 5 but by filling the frame this tightly, this does not leave me any room to apply a different shaped crop to my final image.

Figure 4 is the opposite and I do not think that I have filled the frame enough so the next time that I visit, I need to bear this in mind.

I really like the side-view in Figure 7 above. I like the way that it looks like it is in flight until you observe the pin that goes straight through it. a very interesting contrast of natural and mechanical.

My third visit to the Museum was on Monday the 24th April 2013 between 11.00 am and 

5.00 pm.

After reviewing the images from my second visit, I decided that I was now comfortable with the setting up and use of my focus-stacking system so the next step for me was to now develop my lighting style.

I went into University first-thing on Monday morning to speak to our incredibly knowledgeable Technical Demonstrator John Boothe.

After discussing my ideas with him.

I ended up with a huge range of lighting equipment to experiment with.

I took two portable studio flash-lighting units with reflector/diffuser umbrellas. A wireless-trigger system to operate trigger them.

I also took out two Canon Speedlites and wireless triggers for these.

I intended to experiment with as many lighting styles as I possibly could.

As the core element to this project is portraiture, developing the correct lighting system to give the correct feel of a portrait shoot is of paramount importance to me.

Firstly, I tried the Canon Speedlites but I found it incredibly difficult to angle the heads correctly to a balanced lighting effect. The other two main issues that I had with these were that I did not have a proper diffuser for them and due to the large volume of images that I was taking with the focus-stacking technique, even a full set of batteries was not going to last long enough.

I then spent quite a long time setting up the two studio flash-heads.

From the research that I have conducted into studio portraiture and from my existing knowledge and previous knowledge in this area, I decided that I should have one main light and one ''fill' light.

Due to the tight space that I was working in, this was rather difficult to set up but I managed it.

Figure 1 below shows the copy-stand that I had initially used to mount my camera.

I had just enough space to mount the light on the right of the table to act as the fill-light with the main light at the front and slightly offset to the left.

You can also just one of the two fluorescent lights that I initially used to light my shots.

Figure 2 shows my camera mounted to a tripod instead of the copy-stand.

i found that by mounting my camera on a tripod that I was able to control my background much better. I just used a piece of card with a shallow fold in it so that it would stand upon it's edge.

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The first subject that I photographed was a giant locust. I really liked its facial details and the material of its body worked well under the lights.

I found the single wing to be very distracting though.

I spoke to Dmitri about looking at some different specimens and he suggested Cicadas as seen in fig's 5 and 6.

The image of the Cicada in Figure 6 worked well and is a very photogenic subject. I am very happy with this result.

The subject in Figure 5 looked incredible in the storage drawer but when I photographed it, its details did not stand out too well and all of the tones were very similar. This was the same as the jungle wasp in my previous shoot.

This is a very important lesson learned as it takes a huge amount of time to produce just 1 of these stacked images.

On average, each shot has taken me about 50 minutes to produce.

It takes quite a while to compose the subject accurately within the shot.

To get such a small subject completely square and perpendicular to the focal-plane takes quite a while to get right, the lightest touch and the subject is knocked out of the frame.

I then have to manually define both the starting focus point and the end focus point. This is quite labour intensive and has to be done perfectly.

I then have to wait for the programme to take the ''stack'' of images.

These stacks have ranged from between 50 to 150 images each !

This can take up to half a hour to capture.

When this has finally finished, I have to import the images into Helicon Focus to render them and this can also take up to 5 minutes depending on the amount of files.

My fourth visit to the Museum was on Tuesday the 25th April 2013 between 10.30 am and 
5.00 pm. 


Today I decided to make 2 really significant changes to the way that I set up my shots based upon the lessons learnt from my previous shoot at the Museum.


1. I wanted to have a black background as I had discussed this in my tutorials and everyone was of the same opinion that it would make the images look more so as if they had been shot in a portrait studio.

2. After discussing the progress of my project with my Technical Demonstrator John, we decided that I should try a shoot using flash-photography as this would solve the issues of incorrect white-balance that I was having.


Figure 1 was a complete mess ! I think that this happened because someone had walked into the room whilst the camera was shooting and the vibrations have caused the camera to shake resulting in this unusual image.

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Figure 2 worked really well, the lighting is even across the subject and it has really lifted some incredible detail from the subject.

I spent a huge amount of time trying to adjust the position of the main light to lessen the highlight in the left eye and this was the most that I could reduce it by.

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Figure 3 was a beautiful Dragonfly specimen. the flash-photography worked well again.

However, watching the flash fire so many times was not pleasant at all and in actual fact, I had to leave the camera shooting whilst I went into another room.

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Figure 4 shows another type of jungle wasp that I found. I thought that it looked incredible in its box but It really did not work in front of the camera.

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Figure 5 is a much smaller type of wasp. This image did not work at all, there are lots of ''artefacts'' around the legs of the wasp. these ''artefacts'' are a bi-product of the stacking technique.



At the end of this shoot, Dmitri asked to have a quick word with me about my use of flash-photography.

The room that I have been working is the office of a member of staff at the University called Susan and she has very kindly shared her office space with me.

She said that she quite rightly found the repetitive flash so distracting that she was unable to work and asked that I do not use it in the future.

I also found that the flash was very difficult to work with due to its frequency. 
We mutually decided that I would not use the flash setup again and I would revert back to using continuous lighting instead.




My fifth visit to the Museum was on Wednesday the 26th April 2013 between 10.30 am and 
5.00 pm. 

As soon as I set up my equipment in the morning, I immediately realised that I had a significant problem !

The focus-stacking software that I had been using was a 1-month long trial-version and it had just expired !


This could be an absolute disaster as I had only planned to make one more visit to the museum after this.

This meant that I could not shoot a stack of images in the normal way and this was really frustrating as I had some really great ideas.

I tried to shoot a few ''stacks'' by manually controlling the focus on the lens but this just didn't work in the same way.

Figures 1, 2 and 3 show my attempts at creating a ''stack'' of images by manually controlling the focus. They are OK but certainly nowhere near the standard of quality that I require for my final selection.

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I spent the rest of the day split between looking at new specimens and capturing more of my documentary images that form part of my book.

When I first started to visit the department, Dmitri or Phil would always get the collections out for me but now I am trusted to have a look on my own which is a real honour and is something that only a select few have had the privilege of doing !

I also captured the portrait shot of Dmitri that I wanted to incorporate into my book.

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My sixth visit to the Museum was on Friday the 3rd of May 2013 between 10.30 am and 

5.00 pm. 

On my last visit, Dmitri had asked me if I was willing to help him out with some photography.

He is helping to compile a book about Alfred Russel Wallace who was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and a pioneer in the theory of ''Natural Selection''.

The museum holds some very rare specimens that were classified by Wallace including several types of Beetle that were named after him.

Dmitri needed two shots for the book.

This would not take me very much time and would be an excellent way to express my gratitude for all the help and advice that he has given me over the course of this project.

We spent about an hour and a half in the morning getting the 2 shots just right and we worked really well together.

Dmitri sent the images to the publisher that morning who then immediately confirmed that they were of a sufficiently high standard to be published.

This was great news. I have just had 2 images published in a scientific book ! My name will be duly credited and I will be informed when it is published towards the end of this year.

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In the afternoon, I continued to gated interesting images for my documentary project on the department.

There are some truly fascinating objects in there.

There are many specimens that are over 100 years old !

I have been fascinated with a spider that is in an old glass stopper-top bottle. It has been perfectly preserved in alcohol since 1898 and i have photographed it so many time now trying to get the image just right for my book.

My seventh and penultimate visit to the Museum was on Wednesday the 8th of May 2013 between 11.30 am and 

5.00 pm. 

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This was to be my most productive to the Museum.

I was able to shoot 15 images in just one day.

This sounds rather insignificant in terms of general photography but considering the length of time that it take for a single shot, my technique has really improved.

It now takes me much less time to set my equipment up on arrival and I am am now able to compose the shots and set up my equipment much faster.

I have also now got into the routine of looking for and preparing my next specimen whilst the computer is shooting the stack. This is a great way of saving time and increasing productivity.

Dmitri made a comment that really made me think !

He had observed that the subjects that I had been picking were all really random and did not follow any sort of order. This goes completely against his profession as a taxonomist !

It really made me think back to my research about portraiture and its definitions.

One of which is to photograph a series of similar subjects and to observe the subtle difference between.

One of the best specimens that I have photographed during my time at the museum has been the Cockroaches.


Some of them are very similar indeed. This would make great sense to further develop these images into a coherent set that will work as a series.

In a place with over two and a half million separate specimens, I have tried really hard to photograph as many different types and species as I possibly can but in doing so, feel that I have somewhat wandered away from my initial idea of:

''A series of portraits.''

This has been really difficult as I have found the Entomology Collection absolutely fascinating and have wanted to see and document as much of it as possible.

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Figures 2 to 6 are of the cockroaches. At this stage, I was not sure how my final images choice was going to work?

I had spent so much time photographing a fascinating array of colourful and wonderful specimens from all across the Earth.

But what Dmitri said made absolute sense so as this was my penultimate visit, I  spent the rest of the afternoon concentrating on photographing the cockroaches as well as I possibly could.

In terms of the way that I set up the ''studio'' I employed all of the knowledge and techniques that I have developed during the course of this project to maximise the shots of the Cockroaches.

I reverted to having the camera mounted on the tripod so that I could use a black-background to try to ensure consistency within my shots.

I used white card as reflectors at either-side and in front of my subject to ''bounce'' as much light back onto my subject as possible. 

I was really careful in the way that I set the focus in the computer programme as I have learned through experience that this is one of the main contributing factors to the digital ''artefacts'' that I have been getting in my images as a result of focus stacking.

Ensuring the starting point of the focus is not set too far away from the front of the subject had helped to eliminate this problem.

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Figures 7 to 10 show the ''studio'' setup is various states of use from several different shoots during the course of this project.

After this shoot, I was very happy with all of the images that I had managed to shoot so successfully. 

This however caused me a massive headache as I really wanted to show the best selection of them in my final edit but this really conflicted with the traditional idea of portraits based on the series of Cockroaches.

At the end of the day Dmitri approached me with a very exciting proposition.

His idea is for us to continue to work together after the completion of this project on a similar project that has a much more organised and scientific structure.

The idea being that using my photographic knowledge combined with Dmitri's vast entomological knowledge and also his prior experience of setting exhibitions at the Museum.

We would generate a new series of insect portraits with the intention of me having my own exhibition at The Manchester Museum !

This is an amazing opportunity, Dmitri also said that he was willing to write a bid to the management of the Museum to try to get funding for the exhibition.

This would by no means make me a millionaire overnight but would give my work and my practice some absolutely incredible exposure and god only knows who would see my work on display. this could open up some very big doors for me.

Needless to say, I agreed in principle immediately. We have agreed to meet to discuss this project further in the week after I finish my degree.

My eight and final visit to the Museum was on Friday 10th May 2013 between 11.00 am and 

5.00 pm.

In some of the earlier feedback sessions in this module, I received some great comments about the more abstract images that I had generated from cropping tightly into some of the wings and limbs of the insects.


I discussed this with my tutor David just before my final visit to the museum and we were in agreement that I should try to capture more of these tightly-cropped ''detail'' images.

Bearing this in mind, I went with a slightly different approach for my final visit to the museum.

 Whilst driving to the museum, I was thinking about the type of insect that would have interesting body parts that would work with this approach and I though of a Preying Mantis.

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When I arrived at the Museum, I explained my idea to Dmitri and he showed me where the Mantid section was and allowed me to pick some specimens out.

This was a particularly striking collection, one of the most fascinating that I have seen during the course of my project.

I found the 2 specimens as seen in figures 1 to 5 and set about trying to photograph them using a slightly different approach.

Instead of my normal approach of just having the subject looking straight at the camera, i also shot the from the side as well. I also shot them in a wider frame as their expression and pose was really interesting.

Rotating and cropping into one of the forearms of the Mantis has produced what I think is a fascinating image that reminds me of a human bicep posed as if it were some sort of bodybuilder.

The resolution of this crop is the best that I have been able to achieve so far and I am really impressed with the result.

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Figures 6 to 9 are of a particularly beautiful Dragonfly.

The yellows, greens and blues are really vivid and as in the above images of the Mantis, I have been able to achieve an incredible of sharpness and clarity in the capture of this image.

The detail of the wing in figure 6 is incredible and I really like the detail of what looks like a burn mark. this is not something that I would usually observe on a insect. this is another image that I am considering using as part of my final degree show exhibition.

I really feel that this is due to the sheer amount of time that I have invested into this project.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time working with Dmitri and Phil in the Entomology Department, I have seen some of the most incredible sights.

I feel that my technique in this area of photography has improved so much in the time that i have been working up here.

The process of development has been absolutely fascinating and I can really see how my work has progressed during this time.

I am also going to get some great exposure for this project and indeed myself. Dmitri has asked me to write a short artists statement and to provide a couple of images for the Entomology Department's blog.

And as I mentioned above, he wants to collaborate with me in a future exhibition at the Museum.

Working at the museum has provided some incredible statistics with my photography.

During my time at the museum:

I have taken 4594 separate images totalling an incredible 80.96 GB of data in total.

I have generated 81 ''stacked'' images from the above.

Over the eight separate visits that I have made to the museum, I have clocked up about 60 hours of photography in total.