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In review ...
Arthropoda (Zoology) - A large phylum of invertebrate animals that includes insects, spiders, crustaceans, and their relatives. They have a segmented body, an external skeleton, and jointed limbs ...
A. Mac-ARTHROPOD back for another slide show ... for once, the preference is not to "get the bugs out" - rather, to put new bugs in. And so I have. Over the next week or so, I'll be working on a tropical flowers and plants presentation so the vines I'll be hanging on will be the botanical rather than the Newsvine types.
If you haven't subjected yourself to my first insect slide show, why not check it out here ...
If you survive that one without coming away scratching ... return for another buggy-buzz here.
If you're looking for a photographic challenge, for their sheer numbers and diversification, insects and their kin have no equals ... that can also be said in terms of their beauty, ugliness, fright-factor, out-of-this-word appearances in some cases, their benefits to ecosystems, their destructiveness of crops of ecosystems, as carriers of disease, pests ... and probably some things I left out.
If you don't have a macro lens (or a zoom that lets you get fairly close to your subject) and a tripod, less expensive alternatives are close-up lenses that screw onto a zoom lens and allow you to get closer to small subjects like insects.
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/A95/Close-Up/Close-Up-Lenses.html
http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/closeuplenses.html
They won't give you what a true macro lens will, but if you keep your subject in the center of the frame, they're adequate and a great beginner's "macro" so-to-speak.
As with any photographic subject, the more you know about it in advance, the more intuitive and confident your image-taking will be.
There are things you'll learn and questions you will find yourself asking almost immediately after your first insect shots. Rather than my telling you what those questions will be, how about you take some insect photos and then discover them ... and I'll answer them if you'd like.
As a rule of thumb, if you aren't sure whether an insect you're about to photograph at close range ... bites or stings ... use common sense and caution ... I've never been bit or stung by an insect I'm photographing ... BUT, I've been bitten by other insects while in the process of sizing up the one in my viewfinder! All endeavors carry a particle of risk.
For the record, most of these images were taken before digital cameras were out there, lots of the images were slides ... now scanned and digital. Very few began as RAW/NEF file format so, in my opinion, that's a detriment albeit one that cannot be fixed beyond a certain point (topic for another article).
If you want information about any of the insects depicted, simply click on its image in the slide show for keywords.
mtherof3 ... brace yourself ... here we go again (are you sure I can't post some snake photos ... I have some real winners).
Please respect my copyrights - all images Copyrights A. Macarthur
A. Mac
