One day last year, when I was in Costa Rica’s Barbilla National Park, the manager of the park came to me and said that he had just found the strangest “mariposa nocturna.” What he showed me sitting on one of the beams of the station’s building was indeed strange, but it wasn’t a moth –…
Category: Macrophotography
The eventual usefulness of stuff
I admit it, I am a pack rat. Or at least it may appear so to the untrained eye. I hate throwing things away, but empty orange juice bottles can be used to make great flash diffusers; one of the dozens of loose, mismatched screws will eventually prove itself priceless by fixing my tripod head;…
The mantis wasp
Mantis wasps (Torymidae: Podagrion) are tiny, parasitoid wasps that develop in preying mantis’ egg masses, or oothecae. Each developing wasp larva consumes a single egg in the ootheca (which can contain several hundred eggs), but in some areas the number of these insects can be so high that it is a miracle that any mantids…
Macro lenses: shorter is better (often)
What is the best lens for macrophotography? In an earlier post I argued that long lenses, 100mm and more, are great for photographing small subjects that are easy to scare off, and need to be photographed from a distance. They are also handy if you want to isolate your subject from its background. But what…
Macro lenses: longer is better (sometimes)
What is the best lens for insect macrophotography? I am asked this question every now and then, and the answer is always: “It depends.” The choice of your macro lens in nature photography depends on which aspects of your subject interest you the most. True macro lenses come in different focal lengths, but they all…
Beautiful aliens
Biologists despise alien species. I don’t mean species coming from different planets, but species that colonize areas where they don’t belong. Rats in New Zealand, earthworms in New England, wild boars on New Britain, Wasmannia ants on New Caledonia (can you see a pattern?), they all have been introduced by people to new places, sometimes accidentally,…
The Smaller Majority 