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.
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
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
It’s been a pretty exciting week ’round these parts, with the debut of the ESC Blog. In it’s brief 72 hour existence it has had more than 400 views already, thanks in large part to a fantastic post by ESC President Michel Cusson about parasitic wasps and their “domestication” of viral DNA to help colonize their hosts. Of course there’s been plenty of other insect information being shared around the web this week, including an inordinate number of glowing invertebrate stories…
Like a Beacon in the Night
Scorpions are one of the better known examples of UV fluorescing invertebrates, and over at Safari Ecology there’s a nice breakdown of why they might do so (plus some other interesting scorpion factoids).
Scorpions aren’t the only ones with such a fancy party trick however. While surveying for rats on Alcatraz Island (yep, that Alcatraz), a research team from UC Davis inadvertently found a common millipede species glowing around the island. For the explanation of why these millipedes glow, check out Science Friday’s excellent interview & video with University of Arizona expert Paul Marek.
During the US civil war, some injured Tennessee soldiers noticed their wounds would glow at night, and what’s more, those soldiers who’s injuries glowed were more likely to survive their injuries! Excellent story of the “Angel’s Glow” and how scientific serendipity helped explain an excellent story of insects, nematodes and commensualism.
Last but certainly not least, check out this picture of a UV-fluorescing harvestman from Ecuador! I had no idea that (some?) Opiliones could fluoresce, but I’d love to try it out around here. Here’s a paper (open access) which discusses surverying for a harvestman species in Argentina using UV light. Anyone know where I can get a UV flashlight?
Diptera
Haddaway may have asked “What is Love“, but Floridians are starting ask where are the love bugs?
Ever wondered how to tell the difference between a male mosquito and a male midge? Dave at the Home Bug Garden has the info you need.
Brian Cutting gets some nice shots of an aphid’s worst nightmare: flower fly larvae.
Coleoptera
How much does the bite of a long-horned beetle (Cerambycidae) hurt? I don’t know, but The Bug Geek does!
Turns out that beetle elytra not only offer protection while at rest, but also provide lift while the beetle is in flight!
Ted MacRae finds a real jewel of a beetle that he hadn’t seen in quite some time.
Perhaps this post would be better classified under “Field trips that make me incredibly jealous”, but Hitoshi Takano of the Natural History Museum in London, UK is having a grand old time collecting dung beetles in Tanzania.
Science artist/illustrator Glendon Mellow has a sneak preview for a project he’s been working on recently. I’m incredibly biased, but I can’t wait for the full announcement about that project (hint: it’s coming soon)!
Hymenoptera
I’m not sure whether plants can be turned into zombies, but I think this parasitic wasp featured by Parasite of the Day gets pretty close!
A cup of tea with a touch of honey is a pretty common remedy for a cold, but can honey bees provide us with something more powerful to fight drug-resistant bacteria?
Lepidoptera
National Moth Week is coming up at the end of July, and what better way to get prepared than to pick up Seabrooke Leckie’s new field guide to moths? Seabrooke just got back from what sounds like a really fun book tour and has started sharing stories of some of the people and moths she met. In case you want to get outside and start practicing your mothing skills, Brigette Zacharczenko at Caterpillar Blog shares how she finds moths (and other creatures of the night).
Other Arthropod Orders
Chagas disease has flown under the epidemiological radar for a long time, but new research about infection rates in the US hopes to bring it into the light.
Just when I think I’ve got insects all figured out, Ted MacRae shares a roach that can curl up into a ball and which “nurses” its young. Mind. Blown.
Arachnida
I just heard about these Spider Assassins (also known as Pelican Spiders for pretty obvious reasons), but I already want to learn more about them! Amazing observations and photos of this poorly understood group by Paul Bertner.
The Buddle Lab and its academic offspring are helping to unravel the natural history of spiders in the Arctic, and Chris shares one of their recent publications.
Taxonomy
X-Men figurines: toys, or tools for teaching species concepts & evolutionary history?
By the sounds of it, McGill dipterist Terry Wheeler has an extremely enviable and extensive book collection.
Photography
Want a cool new technique to photograph insects any time, any place? Check out these amazing light stencil photographs by TigTab, and also the tutorial on how to make stencils for yourself!
This photo wins any and all competitions related to last week’s annular solar eclipse, hands down.
To leave off this week, enjoy this fantastic #IAmScience video put together by the team at Story Collider:
Further Reading