September 1, 2012. Can anyone explain to me where the summer has gone? It feels like just yesterday that the snow was melting and I had grand plans of exploration, doable to-do lists to do, and plenty of time to enjoy the summer, but now BugShot is finished, a new crop of undergrads are moving into the University of Guelph residences, and the fall entomology conference circuit is quickly upon us!
Good thing I can bank on the Bug-o-sphere to keep the summer flowing throughout the year.
Green Lynx Spider (Peucetia viridans) — Archbold Biological Station
Still working on flash control, I thought I’d experiment with backlighting after seeing some of Alex Wild’s phenomenal leafcutter ant photos, where the detail in vegetation popped. I only have one off-camera flash however, so I looked around until I found this Green Lynx Spider (Peucetia viridans) sitting nicely while the Florida sun shone brightly in behind, highlighting the leaves like I had hoped. From there, it was a matter of getting the correct combination of shutter speed, aperture and ISO (1/200, f14 & ISO 400 in this case) to allow for the natural light to filter through the leaves, while using diffused flash to expose the spider. I’m not thrilled with the glare above the spider, and the composition isn’t great (it’s pretty heavily centered), but considering the wind was blowing the plant and the spider all over the place, I’m just happy I managed a shot that’s in focus and which somewhat recreates the scene I had envisioned! I’ll certainly be trying this trick again on a calmer day, or with a tripod and plamp around…
If you want to see a much different photo of a Green Lynx Spider, check out Crystal Ernst’s (aka The Bug Geek) incredible portrait.
Ambush bug – Phymata americana – Archbold Biological Station, Florida
While I’ve been using my camera in Manual mode and manually focusing my photos for years, I’ve stuck to using TTL flash, with fairly inconsistent results. One of the points Alex made during his BugShot lighting session was to try using manual flash to gain consistent control over the light output. I decided that would be one of the areas of my photography I’d concentrate on improving next, taming light to act how and where I wanted it to, and this was one of the shots that made me start thinking I was getting a hang of it.
Because there was such diversity of light and dark areas, from the shadowy region between leaves to the light regions on the ambush bug’s arms, being in manual flash mode meant I didn’t have to worry which area my flash was going to expose for, and as a result, I got consistent lighting as I adjusted compositions and focus planes between shots. Luckily this ambush bug was patient and posed nicely while I got things figured out!
Also, apparently ambush bugs aren’t their own family anymore, but rather a subfamily (Phymatinae) of the assassin bugs (Reduviidae)! Who knew? Damn phylogeneticists not thinking to send me a memo when they shake things up like that…
Before I knew it, Sunday morning was upon us and we were down to our final morning of BugShot 2012, which started off great with a raffle for Wimberly gift certificates and plamps for 4 lucky participants (no luck for me unfortunately). The day’s events were cut short because of various travel plans and concerns involving tropical storm Isaac, but Alex, Thomas and John did a great job answering some questions submitted to the Big-Box-O-Questions (you can see them and the answers thanks to Crystal’s Storify of the morning) before moving onto a talk by John about Digital Asset Management.
John’s DAM talk detailed some best practices regarding photo management and workflow, from the moment you click the shutter button right through to sharing and archiving. John is a big fan of Lightroom (as am I) and went over some of the features available for importing and cataloging your photo collections. I’ve been keeping a redundant folder system to protect myself from database corruptions, but John placed all of his trust (and files) into the hands of Lightroom’s management. It made me think that perhaps it’s time I let down my guard and save myself some time by letting Lightroom do the file management on import, but with my luck I’ll end up with a massive system failure shortly after doing so!
There was a lot of audience participation as many people had questions about software or suggestions from their own workflow, so John wasn’t able to get through much of his talk. Apparently the instructors will be sending around their presentations for people to look over on their own time, so I’ll look forward to seeing more of John’s thoughts on keeping files safe and ready to go.
To finish the workshop off, Alex talked briefly about selling images and strategies for making a little money off your work. While he does belong to a photo stock agency, Alex currently sells more through his own gallery site and uses his blog to raise his profile. He also credits his early start in social media and online photo sharing for his success now. I’d certainly love to make a little money off of my work to cover new toys or trips, so I’m going to try and finally get around to setting up a gallery site of my own soon. If people can’t find my images, then they won’t know what their missing out on (or something equally confident…). I’ll file that in the “To Do relatively soon” list.
With that, BugShot 2012 officially came to a close, with participants grabbing a quick lunch before heading off for flights before Isaac hit (which it never really did). Because of my travel arrangements, I had originally hoped to stay an extra night at Archbold and visit the insect collection Monday morning, but the threat of a tropical storm/hurricane forced me to get back to Orlando for the night instead. Alex was kind enough to give myself and Guillaume Dury (a grad student at McGill University) a ride back to civilization, and I had a little extra time to pick his brain about insects, photography and academia, making the rainy trip go by in a flash.
We found an affordable hotel room near the airport, and met up with Crystal, who was stuck until the next day unexpectedly, and had a nice evening chatting about life, work and the grad student way. A relaxed wake up the following morning, an easy shuttle to the airport, and practically no lines at the airport, and it wasn’t long before I was back in the air and heading home. In Chicago I even managed to find a sweet hide-out with plenty of power outlets, which made my WiFi-less layover more bearable. Another smooth flight back to Kitchener and I was back home (although I still got pulled aside by customs, like usual). I have to give major props to American Airlines, because I don’t think I’ve had such uneventful and enjoyable flights like I did this time; I’ll certainly be flying with them again in the future!
So that brings my BugShot 2012 experience to a close. I had an absolutely awesome time, and picked up several tips and plenty of inspiration to work with over the coming year. I’m extremely grateful to the instructors for their hard work, openness and for providing me with a student fee waiver so I could be a part of a great workshop. If you’re interested in photographing insects, whether for work or for play, I can’t recommend BugShot highly enough. You’ll learn new things, meet interesting people, and gain valuable experience that will make you a better photographer. I’d certainly like to go back in the future, and I hope to see some of you there too!
I’ll be posting some my photos over the next several days, as well as discuss some of the photo gear that John demonstrated which I think could make an affordable lab set up. Stay tuned for more soon.
The fringe of Isaac
Hmmm, I’m not really believing this “Sunshine State” thing…
Headin’ home
It may just be me, but I think mornings in Florida are earlier than they are anywhere else. What other reason would make me be so slow to get out of bed this morning? Clearly not the late night photography, or the editing into the darkness, or the midnight social hours, because there’s definitely no down side to those activities. That must mean there’s a temporal disturbance surrounding Archbold Biological Station that makes mornings come sooner than anticipated!
After finally crawling from bed just in time for a bowl of cereal, the group was back out into the field to find and photograph whatever insects they could find, and put some of the newly learned techniques into practice. I spent the morning hanging out with Thomas Shahan and wandering through the Florida Scrub. This is such a unique habitat, and while the insects require a little more searching to find, there are some absolutely fantastic organisms roaming around. I spent some time with a patient bee fly (family Bombyliidae, photos to come later this week) as well as some of the stations Florida Scrub Jays, which weren’t afraid to pose for a photo. I’ve heard they really enjoy peanuts, so maybe they were looking for a handout for their time, but sadly I had nothing but thanks to give.
Soon we were back together at the station posing for a group photo (or 3, or 5…) and then learning about white box photography from Alex Wild. A white box is literally just that, a simple box lined with white paper on the inside to bounce light around, where you can place an insect to get super soft, diffuse lighting. What I found most interesting was Alex has begun leaving the back of his box open, allowing there to be a shadow produced along the back defining line of his subjects. We normally use styrofoam coolers from fish markets in our lab for this sort of photography, but I’m curious about trying Alex’s open back door technique (my only worry being that it leaves a pretty big opening for flies and other skitterish flying insects to vacate the area).
After lunch we had a few hours to spend off by ourselves, so I took MOAR photos, and then started getting them onto the computer to have a look. I’ve been pushing myself to get out of my shell and try new things, and by the first look at the photos, I’m going to have to keep trying! I really haven’t had a chance to edit anything yet, but I’ll be sure to share some photos throughout the week as I get them touched up.
We finished off the afternoon learning about focus-stacking from Thomas Shahan, and high speed photography from John Abbott. Both techniques are specialized for specific circumstances; focus-stacking to provide more depth of field in a composite of several frames focused on different planes, and high speed photography to stop insects in flight. Although I’ve done a lot of focus-stacking with my work in the lab on pinned specimens, I’ve never really tried it with live organisms in the field or studio before. The results can be quite stunning, but I’m not sure it’s something I’ll get into.
High speed flash photography however, is something that I’d love to try after I win the lottery! By using super-fast shutter speeds, big banks of high-output flashes and laser triggers (yes, LASERS), John is able to photograph insects in flight, completely stopping their motion. The photos that John showed were absolutely incredible (you can see a selection of his work in his gallery here), but it requires a ton of equipment (and considerable knowledge & experience with electrical engineering it would seem), most of which isn’t cheap. Like most things with digital photography now-a-days though, there is a potential more affordable alternative that may allow more people to get into the game, with a new product called StopShot. Maybe one day I’ll try my hand at high speed photography, but it will be awhile I expect.
After dinner we had another short photo critique session, and then plenty of free time to socialize and work on making or editing images well into the evening again!
So I’m a day behind already with my recaps… Hopefully I’ll get caught up eventually!
After waking up to an amazing foggy sunrise over the Florida scrub Friday, classes started in earnest and we were Go! Go! Go! for the rest of the day. With a morning filled with demonstrations of a wide variety of photography toys tools from John Abbott (I’m going to cover some of these things in more detail in a later post) as well as an intro to Archbold and a basic entomology lesson (which was a good refresher, and nice to see how another entomologist goes about teaching it).
Friday afternoon was a series of lectures where the instructors shared the secrets between the techniques they’re best known for. Thomas Shahan revealed how he uses $50 worth of reverse-mounted garage sale lenses to get up close and personal with aesthetically pleasing arthropods. He made an interesting point that making your own equipment forces you to really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and understand the mechanics behind your photography (plus you’ll appreciate new gear more when you get it).
Alex discussed techniques to move and mold light around your insect subjects, demonstrating how the position of a flash can dramatically influence a photo; backlighting provides a nice rim accent that can accentuate fine hairs and setae while diffused overhead lighting brings out textures and colours in the insect. Alex also recommended using your flash off camera, and in manual mode rather than TTL or E-TTL. This is something I’ve been battling with, the inconsistency of TTL, so I made an effort to spend the rest of the weekend working in Manual (with promising results, but more on that later). I then spent the afternoon field session learning more about Alex’s lighting techniques. Tip number one was get the flash off the camera, start with the light coming directly down on top of the insect, and getting it as close as possible to the insect. Tip number two was giving your flash enough space to spread out before hitting your diffusion material (Alex prefers velum — a plasticized paper product that can bend and fold while he crawls through the undergrowth chasing ants while providing a nice soft glow).
Friday evening’s session started off with Alex, Thomas and John discussing the finer points of composition. I thought this part was excellent, because although they covered simple things like the Rule of Thirds, they also discussed the idea of simple backgrounds and contrasting tonal qualities between your subject and backgrounds. While I try to take composition into consideration, I generally feel like I’m more worried about getting any shot (and then the specimen depending on what it is and where I am) that I don’t always take the time to set the photo up to the max impact. This is one of the other aspects of my work that I’m going to try and improve on from here on out.
To finish the evening’s events off, students shared some of their photos for the attendants to critique. There wasn’t a whole lot to critique on many of the photos however, as it seems this is a very talented group of individuals! It was cool to see some other work, and see a variety of different styles. A little time spent in the field afterwards before bed topped off a fantastic day 2 for BugShot 2012!
As hard as it is for me to believe, we’ve reached the end of August already. Where the summer has disappeared to I have no idea, but at least BugShot 2012 is finally here!
Bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be making my way down to Archbold Research Station in central Florida to hang out with a bunch of bug nerds and photography geeks for 72+ hrs of total macrophotography immersion. To say I’m excited would be a bit of an understatement at this point! I can’t wait to meet and learn from not only the dream team of instructors (Alex Wild, Thomas Shahan and John Abbott), but also the other participants who will be bringing a wide array of skills and specialties to the workshop.
As has become somewhat of the norm whenever I travel for work-related stuff, I’m going to try and post a summary of the day’s events each night with highlights, photos and various other musings, while tweeting things as they happen (when WiFi allows).
While I haven’t been able to get out quite as much as I would have liked to in preparation for this workshop, I did manage to find a nice barklouse last weekend while on vacation. This Cerastipsocus venosus (family Psocidae) was hanging out with me on the cottage porch while I BBQ’d dinner and sat still long enough for a few pictures.
Cerastipsocus venosus, photographed in Bancroft, Ontario
Cerastipsocus venosus, photographed in Bancroft, Ontario
Cerastipsocus venosus photographed in Bancroft, Ontario