Macro Photography Highlights Beauty of Extinct and Endangered Insects

Bombus dahlbomii (Patagonian bumblebee)

Can you take us through your setup for photographing these insects and how long it takes to arrive at the final product?

The insects are photographed on a bespoke camera rig using microscope lenses. Each image is created from over 10,000 individual photographs and takes three weeks to create. When you shoot at high magnification, there is very little in the image that is in focus, and therefore we have to take many images, each with a tiny slice of focus, and squash them together to create an image that is fully focused from front to back.

I will also divide the insect into many different sections and shoot them separately, changing the lighting on each section to make it look as beautiful as possible. For example, the lighting on an eye will be completely different from a wing because it is a different shape, reflectiveness, and opacity. The lighting technique used depends on the qualities of the area of the insect body being photographed.