Millions of giant mayflies emerging from water!

Must be quite a sight to behold! You can witness this at Körös River (Hungary), Central Europe, if you are lucky. Because of these kinds of occurrences being largely dependent on environmental factors such as temperature or moisture, it was nearly impossible to tell exactly when they would happen.



Life in the Undergrowth

Read more about the amazing documentary here.

Since mayflies have no mouths nor stomaches, they rely solely on fat reserve for energy to fly. That means a flight time of roughly 30 minutes.

Tough to be a male harvestman!

Another clip from the Life in the Undergrowth series.

If you don't keep your nest neat and tidy, no females will even visit you. On the plus side, though, if you're excellent in this department, you might get multiple visits in a night!









Highly recommended:

Springtails are cute!

Springtails


This short clip is extracted from the great Life in the Undergrowth
More about springtail on Wikipedia.

You can find my first springtail (Collembola: Paronellinae) shots here.
Highly recommended:

An orchard spider with parasitoid wasp grub!

Just a short clip from the amazing "Life In The Undergrowth - 01".

An orchard spider is shown enduring a parasitic wasp grub, which injects its host with a hormone that deranges it and halts the spinning of webs. The grub then sucks the liquid from the spider's body and uses the remaining silk to form its cocoon.



You can read about this amazing DVD and how it was made here on Wikipedia.

More parasitoidism:

A heavily parasited caterpillar. You can see grub movement in the animation.


A parasitoid wasp ovipositing on a autumn leaf butterfly caterpillar


A parasitoid wasp waiting to parasitize the eggs of these tortoise beetles.


Two parasitoid wasps on the egg sac of a spitting spider.


Giant tropical ant, Camponotus gigas under attack by parasitoid Phoridae flies.


Two parasitoid wasps on a leaf beetle




Highly recommended:

Life In the Undergrowth

"If we and the rest of the backboned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land's ecosystems would collapse. The soil would lose its fertility. Many of the plants would no longer be pollinated. Lots of animals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals would have nothing to eat. And our fields and pastures would be covered with dung and carrion. These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land — but often, they're disregarded. We would do very well to remember them."

–Sir David Attenborough, in closing of the "Life In The Undergrowth" documentary.

I must have told you a hundred times how much I love the awesome Life in the Undergrowth insect documentary. It's probably the best insect documentary ever made!

While I enjoy every single minute of the 5 episodes x 50 minute series, it's the closing by Sir David Attenborough that really moves me deeply.

You have read the words, now see the short clip which i extracted, and hear it from Sir David Attenborough himself.


Go search for more clips of the series on youtube. Better still, get the DVD. The article on Wikipedia on "Life In The Undergrowth" is an excellent read too.

Highly recommended:

Getting to know your macro subjects!

Macro is a bit like portraiture, except instead of working with a human models, you work with insects.

In portraiture, you want to get to know your models, help them relax, pose them and bring out the best in them. Same for insects. Okay, you can't really make insects pose if they don't want to, but knowing as much as you can about them help you in finding them, approaching them (without spooking them) and increasing one's appreciation for these amazing insects.

One way of getting to know your insect models is by watching this incredible DVD by BBC, narrated by the great Sir David Attenborough.

Life in the Undergrowth

This is just one of the clips i found on youtube. You can find a few more from the same "Life In The Undergrowth" DVD.


Of course, knowing them well is one thing. Putting them in good light is another thing altogether. Make sure you read up on:

1. Tips on shooting with natural light.
2. Tips on full flash macro photography
3. Flash exposure compensation (FEC) in macro
4. Macro Light diffusion (mainly for the MT24EX but can be adapted to suit the working distance of your lens)

Highly recommended:

My first slide show on youtube:)

This is the first video/slide show i created using mainly some of my favorite digital macro images and also couple of nature and landscape images. The free tune is from www.audionautix.com

All images shot with a Canon 40D, Canon MPE65 1X-5X macro lens and Canon MT24EX Twin Flash with DIY Concave Diffuser.