Exotic Insects

In the past I’ve had the idea that I might keep some exotic insects to photograph. Probably I don’t have the dedication to set that up and to keep them alive…so I was very pleased to be invited by a colleague and friend to photograph his insects at his home.

It wasn’t as easy as you might think…they don’t keep still…the locusts are inclined to jump off their perch and happily bound along the floor. The mantises were curious and moved their heads and antennae a lot…and one started to groom itself when I was in the middle of photographing it.

The insects were lit with a combination of natural window light and continuous LED lights. I used manual focus stacking aided by focus peaking, with the camera set on a tripod (unusual for me even with insects) and using a 90mm macro lens. Most of the stacks were approximately eight images and the groups of images were blended together in Photoshop afterwards.

With a little patience, I was able to obtain a few usable shots from the session. Here are some of them.