A Shift in Focus

“Summertime, when the livin’ is easy…”

There is nothing I like more than to get up early on a June morning, grab my coffee and camera and go to Banner to walk the levee at East Point. By the time I get to the river side, I’ve heard the morning chorus of songbirds, taken some good shots (400 mm lens with fill flash and the Better Beamer) and spooked a few deer. As the morning progresses I also start to notice the little things: the fresh scents on the breeze, the green of the marsh grass, wild flowers, and on those flowers butterflies and insects… dragonflies... spider webs … ticks…ugh! Well, nothing is perfect!

The only other big problem with the summer photography schedule is that the good light occurs very early in the morning or late in the day, when a million fishermen have scuffed up a lot of dust. As I considered this I realized that if I could figure out how to avoid the insect bites, I might need to consider close-up photography of the micro world. The food chain stands on the shoulders of tiny critters, and I needed to give them their due. So I decided to do some serious micro photography.

A good flash system allows you to do macro/micro photography any time of day, although natural lighting is still preferred. The more light you have, the higher the shutter speed can be, and this gets to be important, because “camera shake” is particularly pesky with close-up pictures. If you use two small “slave” flashes on each side of the camera, the high contrast shadows you get in midday can be eliminated. And of course, your shots are helped by using a tripod, monopod, or bean bag to steady the lens.

The other technical consideration was the purchase of 105 mm macro/micro lens. I once got a good shot of a grasshopper with my 400 mmm lens, but I had to lie flat on my belly 12 feet away to accommodate the lens’ focal distance. With my new micro lens I can get within an inch of my subject, and I also can shoot good shots standing several feet away.

The shift in focus led to new adventures. I had to practice new photographic skills and learn the habits of arthropods. When is the best time to photograph a dragonfly? Midday on 105 degree F day? How do you get the butterfly to hold still? When do crayfish crawl out of their holes? How do you walk in the muck quietly when stalking crayfish? How do you get your foot out of the muck?

The more I observed of the micro world, the more I realized that although the creatures looked alien, they were still ruled by the same imperatives of the larger world: eat to grow and survive to mate and reproduce.

Monarch butterflies mating.

Milkweed bugs mating.

My favorite shot is of a battered blue dasher dragonfly resting on a grass stalk, near the end of his days.

His eyes look like they have been dented in a fight with a competing male; he is blinded and soon will die. We think of these beautiful insects as flitting from place to place over the pond in a carefree way, but their world is just as full of frenetic activities and deadly competition as that of any vertebrate on the planet. I had shifted my focus, but the life stories were the same.