Invertebrate macro photography

Painted Lady enjoying the sun

I thought I put together some details of how I take the photos I post in this blog. Unless otherwise stated they are all my photos. I actually started using my digital camera as a recording device. It is much easier to go to a photo and ID a bug than to try and remember it. Until 2009 my camera was a Canon Powershot G6, portable and with a superb macro. I have often considered going for a dSLR. I used to have a lot of - non digital - camera gear, macro lenses, flash arms, etc, but the advantage of the semi-pro G6 is that you don't have to carry stuff around, they are very light and you still get pretty decent photos. The quality of macro (and the 'supermacro' mode) in this camera is widely recognised and amazing value for money. I am a self-tought photographer, reading around and with trial and error I came out with this little collection of bug-photo hunting tips.

No flash
Personally, I am seriously alergic to flash. I love the look of photos with natural light and it is also less disturbing for your subject. Also, if you value portability taking macros wiht a flash would mean to get a flash arm, so, in this sense for me is also impractical. This of course is more challenging and means that many photos are not as good as they could have been with flash, and limits the photos you can get with poor light conditions. I actually don't take many photos in the winter, as there are not so many bugs around so it's not too bad.
Get close and personal

I like to see my subject eyes, so, I often go level with my beasts, with is often ground level. Some species do have bright patterns when photographed from above (butteflies, hoverflies), but all come into their own when photographed eye to eye

A Common Rough Woodlouse, Porcellio scaber

Know your subject
Finally, you do need to get very close, so you need to get some idea of how different invertebrates react to you. Some do not seem to react at all, making exemplar models (for example, garden spiders). Many do only react (negatively) to being exposed to the light and run away as fast as they can when you uncover them (centipedes, woodlice); others do show some avoidance behaviour when approached or normally move quite fast (butterflies, dragonflies). In any case, slowly approaching your subject won't do any harm. Only in very rare instances will the subject actually come to you to get his/her photo taken.

Zebra Spider, Salticus scenicus, looking at the camera

Hold your hand steady
If you can, rest your hand on anythin solid that happens to be close to your subject - ground, trunk, wall, rock - this will reduce camera shake and will result in crisper images in poor light conditions, when shutter speed is slow. The point is to keep your hand steady when pressing the shutter. Some people become aware of their own heartbeat and claim to shoot between heartbeats. I am just happy to hold my breath when shooting.

Azure damselfly

Shoot, shoot and shoot

When you are in a position to shoot, do not think twice and keep taking photographs if your subject allows. I start by taking some distant shots in normal mode. Then I get closer little by little. A poor quality distant shot is often enough for identification purposes. There will be time to delete, edit and label over the long, dark winter!

Garden ants on Peony bud

Choose your background
Blackground often makes the difference between a great and an OK photo. You don't have to move your subject. Most of the time changing the angle at which you take the photo will do. On the photo on top, taking a photo from the side of the bud would have shown a house in the background. A top to bottom shot just adds a green background and makes the wine-red of the Peony petals stand up.

Ectemnius hunting hoverflies

Show behaviour
Macro becomes very interesting when it shows the animal doing something. The photo above shows some behaviour but is also an example of a poor background, my son's blue plastic car. Doh!
Powershot G10
My recent upgrade has been to a Powershot G10. I thought about it a long time (I had started considering the G9, but the G9 came along. Its macro lenses do not allow for Supermacro and you have to change the zoom if you get closer to your subject, but the 15 megapixels leave room for quite a lot of cropping. I did some comparisons and I was satisfied I was actually getting better photos with the G10. It is even smaller and lighter than the G9, with a larger, brighter LCD screen, so now I actually carry it with me at all times.

Darts for love

I must apologize as so far my posts have been solely about insects. I hope this one will change the trend. A couple of days ago I saw the first mating Garden Snails (Helix aspersa or Cornu aspersum) of the year. It's been quite a long, cold winter and a dry spring, so, garden plants have been enjoying quite a long snail-free season. Snails have now come out of their winter dens under stones, behind tiles and in general dry places around the garden and are meeting each other ready for reproduction. Garden snails are hermaphrodite, that is, they produce sperm and eggs, but they only rarely self-fertilize, instead they mate several times over spring and summer (in my garden I've seen copulating snails from early May until the end of August. Mating is a reciprocal long-winded affair, the pair of snails exchanging sperm simultaneously. An remarkable aspect of courtship in snails is that it involves the shooting of a relatively large, calcareous, thin and sharp 'love dart' from one snail to its partner before actual copulation. The purpose of this violent affair was poorly understood and debated for a long time. The dart is not a requisite for successful mating (apparently, snails often 'miss') and not all the individuals shoot or a physical stimulant for copulation, as previously assumed. It became apparent that snails shooting their darts effectively had higher success fathering the offspring of the other snail. Recently, research has shown that the dart should be instead called 'the needle': the dart allows mucus to be injected into the other snails head: this mucus contains a chemical that inhibits sperm digestion (apparently, without the dart most sperm is digested), and therefore allows the shooting snail to father more offspring. Therefore the dart is an evolutionary result of sperm competition.

Mating garden snails, the snails on the right has been darted.

Snail laying eggs

Snail eggs

Nomada bees

A female Nomada cuckoo bee

Something that never fails to surprise me, is that once I have a name to some beast or plant, I start to come across it more often: Learning allows you to see. This happened to me recently with Nomada bees. Before I had an ID I thought they were some sort of wasp. I had seen them often in my front garden. A few days ago I came across three of them, loitering around a crack in the pavement on a south facing garden in my street and got a few shots. Why wouldn't I identify them as wasps? They are almost hairless, slender, with a thin wasp-like waist and neat black and yellow striped abdomens. Again Wild About Britain, my favourite wildlife forum, proved me wrong. The wasps were in fact, cuckoo bees of the genus Nomada. This is a very large genus, worldwide over 800 species (around 30 British sp.) which mainly cleptoparasitise bees of the genus Andrena,  particular Nomada species tend to be host-specific, that is, they specialize in parasitizing a single Andrena species. Note I wrote 'cleptoparasites', what means is that they actually lay their eggs in nests of bee species, on the pollen supply intended for the developent of the bee larva. Nomada males and females are often found around their host nests. Males waiting for females to emerge and then mate with them. The females lay their eggs in cells being provisioned by the host. Their larva kills the host larva and eats the pollen provision during its development.
 Research into Nomada chemical communication has revealed a complex, puzzling system in which some of the hosts chemicals are also produced by the parasite. Nomada males produce chemicals identical in composition to secretions of the female Andrena species they parasitize which they use to line their nest cells. Why is the male and not the female which produces this chemicals is not know. It could be that upon copulation the male parasite transfers the secretion to the female and thus she can enter the nests with a chemical 'camouflage'? Is this to show the female the right species' nest? Both explanations seem feeble, as it would seem simpler that both sexes would learn the odor of the nests they grew in, and that females could in theory produce the smell themselves if that renders them less likely to be attacked in the host's nest.
 The particular Nomada species in our front garden seems to be N. marshamella, which parasitises several species of Andrena (A. carantonica, A. scotica, A. trimmerana, A. nigroaena). Some of these nest communally in hole or cracks in pavements. So, all this fascinating chemical communication and tales of robbery and killing might be happening, literally, just outside your front door.

Two Nomada bees waiting at the entrance of an Andrena nest.

This one is about to enter the nest

Andrena bee resting (possibly A. carantonica). This genus is not only parasitized from Nomada cuckoo bees, but males are also deceived by orchids!

Osmia rufa update

The new bee post has been a great source of both entertainment and frustration (lots of blurry shots of bees leaving nest!). Now females are very busy going in and out of the nests and we can follow live how each provisions the cells and finally blocks the nest entrance with dark mud. Today three cells had been finished. The bees feed all around the garden. They visit the apple blossom and the rosemary. A new development is that we have found the cleptoparasitic fly Cacoxenus indagator visiting the post - not yet entering nests. Not only have the bees been quick adopting the new bee post, but they have rapidly been followed by their parasites.

This is a selection of photos of the last couple of weeks.

A pair of Osmia rufa. Apparently, the male stays on top of the female for a while after mating. Note the smaller size of the male and the 'horns' on the face of the female

A bee about to leave the nest. It looks like a male

Another male inspecting a hole

Female starting to build the last cell wall

The wall is almost complete

The finishing touches

The finished nest

This little fly - same size and family than the fruit fly - is a cleptoparasite of Osmia rufa nests. It lays its eggs on the stored pollen in the cells.

Links: Solitary bees

Red Mason Bee

Osmia rufa for beginners

An article with interesting photo of the inside of the nest

Another article with lots of info on associated fauna to Osmia rufa nests

A new bee post

Yesterday, we decided to move our bee post from the very unsuccessful position it has been for a couple of years. It was too shady and not very visible to us, so we decided on a more exposed, south facing location in the garden. We made a new post, also on an ash branch, and drilled more holes in the old one just to make it a bit more attractive and secured it to the end of our trellis (it will be covered by a vine, clematis and rose later in the season). This is what the end product looked like.

Red mason bees (Osmia rufa) males have been patrolling and feeding in the garden since the beginning of April. They like to sit on the conservatory wooden frame, garden posts and leaves and then follow a route around the garden, stopping nervously here and there. I've seen them feeding on Grape Hyacinth and Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve'.

Male Red Mason Bee, note the long antennae and the red, hairy abdomen

Male red Mason Bee feeding on Erysimum

Today, in the afternoon, barely 24 hours after the post were placed in their new location!, we've seen a male inspecting the holes (looking like it was counting them over and over) and then a female - the first I've seen this year - actually getting into a hole and kicking out some pieces of wood. When she emerged, she was briefly chased by the male. At some point we could see two males.

Male near hole

Male inspecting hole

Female in the hole pushing wood out

The bee posts will hopefully attract other bee species and their parasites, so I look forward to the next season of post watching.