Alright, because I’m tired and I need to get to bed, today’s bug of the day challenge is a little different than those that came before! Today, 15 BioPoints are up for grabs for the first person to correctly guess the colour of this nymphal grasshopper from El Copal Reserve in Costa Rica. I’ll post the answer and the full-coloured photo after I return to Canada!
Each day I’m away in Costa Rica I’ll be highlighting an insect I came across, and challenging each of you to come up with the identification! Coveted BioPoints will be awarded to the first person to post the correct family name (5), common family name (2), and if you know the subfamily, you’ll get an additional 15! I’ll provide the answers and award points after I get back to Canada, so make sure to check back in to see how you did! Remember BioPoints can be redeemed for framed photos when you get a total of 200!
Each day I’m away in Costa Rica I’ll be highlighting an insect I came across, and challenging each of you to come up with the identification! Coveted BioPoints will be awarded to the first person to post the correct family name (5), common family name (2), and if you know the subfamily, you’ll get an additional 15! I’ll provide the answers and award points after I get back to Canada, so make sure to check back in to see how you did! Remember BioPoints can be redeemed for framed photos when you get a total of 200!
Welcome to a new feature for the blog, Bug of the Day! Each day I’m away in Costa Rica I’ll be highlighting an insect I came across, and challenging each of you to come up with the identification! Coveted BioPoints will be awarded to the first person to post the correct family name (5), common family name (2), and if you know the subfamily, you’ll get an additional 15! I’ll provide the answers and award points after I get back to Canada, so make sure to check back in to see how you did! Remember BioPoints can be redeemed for framed photos when you get a total of 200! See you tomorrow!
Welcome to a new feature for the blog, Bug of the Day! Each day I’m away in Costa Rica I’ll be highlighting an insect I came across, and challenging each of you to come up with the identification! Coveted BioPoints will be awarded to the first person to post the correct family name (5), common family name (2), and if you know the subfamily, you’ll get an additional 15! I’ll provide the answers and award points after I get back to Canada, so make sure to check back in to see how you did! Remember BioPoints can be redeemed for framed photos when you get a total of 200! See you tomorrow!
I took a short break this morning to clear my head and get back into this photography thing, so I headed over to the University of Guelph Arboretum and went looking for flies. It became readily apparent that not picking up a camera for 8 months was going to make it a learning process all over again! And the first lesson? Charge your flash batteries! One shot into the day and I realize my SB-800 is dead in the water. Crap… luckily my shooting buddy also uses Nikon equipment, so while he was shooting I was collecting, and vice versa. Problems solved right? Well, lesson 2 quickly became apparent; check your settings! I had switched to shooting JPEG this winter for a family function! Crap… a quick switch back to RAW format with hope those first few shots were ok and won’t need much editing (JPEG files don’t handle heavy editing well) and back to work I go.
Well, at least something worked out! (Click to enlarge)
The rest of the morning was spent finding the body control and breathing necessary for macro work, and by lunch time I was feeling almost back into the swing of things! I definitely need to make the time to go out more regularly this summer, and remember, check, double check, and triple check your equipment each time you go out!
The blog is likely going to be pretty quiet in the coming weeks as I finish writing my Master’s thesis and prepare to defend. I’ll try and make a few simple posts throughout the process, but more detailed posts likely won’t happen until I have some extra spare time! Until then, I hope you’ll enjoy some of my photos from the archives, and stay tuned for plenty of new content this summer!
This Melanoplus sp. (I think) was hanging out in the Alderville Prairie (Click to enlarge)
Just wanted to highlight an introductory workshop on insect macro photography that I’ll be giving with Dave K.B. Cheung at Wings of Paradise butterfly conservatory in Cambridge Ont. This 35 minute presentation will touch on the basics of macro photography, from equipment to technique, and we’ll follow it up with hands on training in the conservatory! If you’re in the area March 7th and would like to learn more about insect photography please join us for a morning of shooting and teaching! There is limited seating available, so make sure to RSVP by emailing Dave early!
Shit happens, and as a dipterist who studies dung-feeding flies, it keeps me in business! But its not just micropezids that come into brown gold, many different families show up for the cheap, stinky meal!
Well, this post was originally supposed to be finished for Friday, but here we are and it’s already Monday!
Today I’ll be showing some of the lower flies from my trip to Bolivia in spring 2007.
