False Honey ant - Prenolepis imparis

False Honey ant - Prenolepis imparis, originally uploaded by imarsman.

This photo of a False Honey ant is unremarkable in that it is not too sharp and could be better lit. One thing I do like about it though is that it shows the ant's glossa (tongue) very clearly. I only recently learned what they were called. I believe they function to help ants drink up liquids. False Honey ants seem to be big fans of nectar from flowers and from aphids, so it makes sense that they would have proportionally large glossa. I believe they have two shorter and two longer strands to their glossa.

Carpenter ant - Camponotus sp.

Carpenter ant - Camponotus sp., originally uploaded by imarsman.

This season I've been particularly engrossed by ants. Mostly I've taken photos of the False Honey ant (in spring and fall when they are active), and the Acrobat ant (very interesting behaviours and body morphology). I haven't gotten any shots of Carpenter ants, that is, until yesterday when I found one grooming aphids and feeding on their nectar.

This ant and the aphids were on the underside of a leaf (basswod I think, a tree noted for its attractiveness to sap-feeding insects). I turned it over and took lots of photos. Gravity means nothing to these creatures. Since I could move and hold the leaf as I pleased I was able to get some shots at face level that are otherwise difficult to get, including this good profile shot.

I bumped up the temperature a bit, as the late afternoon time of the shot desaturated things. You can see its glossa (tongue parts) at the base of its head. I love the way its left rear leg stretches out.

Obscure Sap beetle - Conotelus obscurus

Obscure Sap beetle - Conotelus obscurus, originally uploaded by imarsman.

Finally got another shot of the Obscure Sap beetle, again in my neighbour's front yard. It's a teeny beetle. The images I've taken and posted on Flickr and buiggide.net seem to be some of the only ones on the 'net, certainly the clearest.

Red Milkweed Beetles - Tetraopes tetrophthalmus

Red Milkweed Beetles, originally uploaded by imarsman.

Black-spotted red beetles are photogenic. Mating ones even more so. I was happy to find them, but the female seemed to be pretty unimpressed with the mating thing, preferring to focus her attention on eating, which is probably wise, given that she would need shortly to be producing and laying eggs. The male is determined, but looks a bit ridiculous.

Feeding katydid

Feeding katydid, originally uploaded by imarsman.

This katydid was nonplussed at my presence and by the repeated photographs I took of it. I was pleased to capture it eating, pleased that it was eating from a beautiful chicory flower, and pretty pleased with how this photograph came out. On Safari, my current favourite browser, the colours and tone come out rich and well balanced. On Firefox and IE, browsers lacking ICC profile detection and associated rendering support, this photograph looks a bit overexposed and not so rich in colour.

Leaf-footed bug - Acanthocephala terminalis

Large odd bug, originally uploaded by imarsman.

Here's a fun bug, large for Ontario. It's a Leaf-footed bug, one of a large variety of related bugs that suck juices from plants. It's a bug in the truest sense of the word, being of the sub-order Heteroptera, having a sucking part, six legs, and other features, along with having a nymph phase rather than a true metamorphosis. 

I had a bit of a hard time getting good shots of this individual. In typical avoidance fashion, it kept on moving away from the camera, hiding on the underside of the leaf. At this small scale, gravity is less of a consideration, certainly less of a hindrance.

Pennsylvania Ambush bug - Phymata sp.

Ambush bug, originally uploaded by imarsman.

Another use of bright and strong colour, though not as successful as with the Long-horned bees. I think this one doesn't work as well because the balance of bright and dark tends here too much to the bright. 

Ambush bugs are very tricky to photograph, both because they are very very well camouflaged and because it's tricky, when photographing them, to know when you are in focus. I think this is because the eyes, which I normally use as my focal point, are soft and flat in colour, unlike the rest of their body, which is angular and rough and stippled. This photograph worked out well enough because I was able to get good focus on the head and shoulders and because the pale green of the bug contrasts with the orange-yellow of the flower. I made it a bit cooler to bring out the green.

If I ever went into entomology I might enjoy studying exactly how insects go about making themselves more difficult to see, beyond the obvious colour camouflage and not moving. I think it may turn out that some new ways are still to be found whereby insects take advantage of how the visual system of an observer works to make it more difficult to get a visual 'lock'.

Together briefly

Together briefly - II, originally uploaded by imarsman.

This photo of two Long-horned bees mating on a flower is one of my favourite invertebrate photos in a while. It was taken offhandedly, though with carefully checked exposure, at the main building of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton.

I love the deep, rich colour and the fact that it draws the bees into the scene. The richness of tones reminds me of those one sees in Rembrandt paintings, tending towards the dark, but not too much to obscure. Rembrandt paintings, when I was young, used to strike me as too dark and sombre, but now, as I try to learn more about colour and tonal ranges, I tend to admire this sort of thing more. Perhaps doing strong tones while still allowing lighting in a scene to work so very well was Rembrandt's way of showing off.

Surfing Safari

Though I may change my mind on this, I am switching from using Firefox to Safari as my browser of choice. Most of the reasons for this relate to aesthetics and colour handling. Safari, on my iMac, is generally more responsive and smooth than Firefox. Copied text in Safari has its formatting preserved, making the loss of the Aardvark plugin easier to live with. Passwords get saved in the system keychain. Managing bookmarks is easier and more comfortable. Text areas (in v. 3 beta) can be resized by dragging, a great feature. Search within a page highlights instances of found text very nicely. Safariblock, a free plugin, gets close enough to the functionality of Firefox's Adblock. In summary, Safari gets in the way less, letting me concentrate on the main things I am doing. Finally, though it's planned for version 3 of Firefox, Safari handles embedded ICC profiles for images now, making rendering of my Flickr images much much more beautiful.

Possible Sidewalk Tiger Beetle - Cicindela sp.

Sidewalk Tiger Beetle on side of dirt road, originally uploaded by imarsman.

There are so many species of Tiger Beetle in the world. I hope to run across as many of them as I can. This was a new one for me, found along a dirt road in a partially roughed out section of a new subdivision by my sister- and brother-in-laws' place. I was very pleased to be able to photograph it.

Burrowing wasp - Tachysphex sp.

Burrowing wasp digging nest in sandy gravel, originally uploaded by imarsman.

I love photos of invertebrates doing things. Several of these burrowing wasps were busily, ah, burrowing in the sandy gravel along a roughed-out road. They would quickly dig the burrow, then spend quite a bit more time getting it just right. These wasps will paralyze an insect and bring it back to the burrow, laying their egg or eggs on it so that when hatching occurs, the new larva or larvae have something to sustain them.

What captivates

Red eyes, originally uploaded by imarsman.

This Flesh Fly has a lot going for it, photogenically. It's got big red eyes that draw human attention. It's body is grey, allowing the red eyes to stand out even more. This shot has the fly's head cocked a bit and one leg lifted off the leaf. If one wants to identify an insect one wishes a clear view of all major body parts. Aesthetics come with a different set of values. Aesthetically, it's ok to have a sharp foeground and fuzzy background, in fact, it looks better that way. I always feel so sad for the poor pinned bugs curled up and dessicated on their pins.

Small Serengeti

Small Serengeti 2, originally uploaded by imarsman.

I love this shot. Wish I'd had the flash up a bit more to get at detail for the ants close into the wood louse, but there's plenty there to tell a good story, nonetheless. The wonderful level of activity and interaction one can find just by looking down as one treads a path is awe inspiring. These Acrobat Ants were gathered around a wood louse, slowly picking it apart until I imagine they'd cooperatively carry it away. The one on top with her back arched is displaying in response to a threatened approach by an ant from another species. Besides lighting, focus was the most challenging aspect of this shot, as limited depth of field forced me to choose carefully what parts of the frame to highlight. I opted for the carapace of the wood louse and as many of the gathered ants as possible.

All that I got

All that I got, originally uploaded by imarsman.

There's a neat bee fly in our garden. He's brown and fuzzy. He tends to stay in one place for about ten seconds, then fly to a new spot or return pretty much to the same spot after flying around for a while. This bee fly is shy, so I've been trying to take a photo of him at much less than 1:1. This is the clearest I got, a photo captured just as he/she was taking off. I'm sad I didn't get more but happy I happened to get a clear shot of the takeoff.

Since I've moved from my obsession with photographing ants I've been having a bit of difficulty photographing things that aren't 5mm long. Ants, besides being small, are pretty horizontal, meaning that a lot can be captured with minimal depth of field. Bees on flowers or larger flies, wasps, and bees in general, are difficult to capture doing something ineresting at 1:1 magnification. Either depth of field limitations ruin important detail or interesting context just doesn't fit. I'm having to experiment with less than 1:1 magnification, flash levels, and aperture to keep getting good bokeh.

Frustration and reward

Greetings, originally uploaded by imarsman.

How can I take credit for interesting shots of tiny creatures? All I have to do is walk out my front door, sit down on an overturned bucket, and take a few dozen pictures. A few always turn out well. Ants have caught my attention in a big way for the past few days. I've discovered that there are at least five species in our front yard and driveway alone, something I never would have guessed had I not begun to photograph them. False Honey Ants and Acrobat Ants are the two species that graze on the sweet setae (hairs) that grow from the buds, leaves, and stems of the Bachelor's Button plants in our front garden. The individuals in this photo are False Honey Ants, engaging in a brief moment of contact to ensure they are indeed from the same colony. I have a Nikon D50 camera with a Micro Nikkor 60mm lens. This gives me 1:1 capability. Yesterday, I added in a clip-on Raynox M250 closeup lens, which finally gave me eye detail. The combination of equipment and settings is reasonably simple and leads to good results if one keeps at it. The other factor is an interest in finding good subjects and taking the time to get to know them and take lots and lots of photos of them. This shot was taken with onboard flash diffused through the plastic of a vinegar bottle after 5:00 PM. To compensate for the reduced light I bumped the ISO to 400. I've found that increasing ISO helps with exposure but does lead to slightly increased graininess particularly noticeable on out-of-focus areas.

False Honey Ant clearing food from its jaws

Aaaak!, originally uploaded by imarsman.

Cant' stop photographing these little wonders. Good for both my photographic technique and my soul. Apparently, False Honey Ants eschew weather that's too warm, preferring to come out when it's cooler and lay low when it gets too hot. They have taken over the Bachelor's Buttons in our yard. I still see some Acrobat Ants browsing on the flowers, but seemingly fewer and fewer. False Honey Ants are slightly larger than Acrobat Ants and thus a bit easier to capture photographically. They are also more apt to move about, making it tricky to get shots of them, but more likely that they will be interesting shots like this one. Acrobat Ants tend to spend their time with their heads down, not just down low, but pointing downward to the ground. Much more difficult for a giant like me to photograph.

Regurgitating

Regurgitating, originally uploaded by imarsman.

I need to learn more about what this ant is up to. It seems to be regurgitating its food. At first when I saw False Honey Ants I doing things with their forelimbs I thought that they were preeing. It turns out they were at least some of the time playing with their food.

Artsy

Perspective shift, originally uploaded by imarsman.

I like this shot. Ants don't tend to spend a lot of time near the flower part of the Bachelor's Button plant, so getting a shot of them there takes a bit of patience and a lot of tries. I had the camera angled for this shot, resulting in this sideways view that I decided not to correct. Things I like best about this shot include the purple of the emerging flower petals, the gentle folding of the petals, the black background of most of the shot, and the brown translucence of the False Honey Ant.

Lasius alienus

Ant hill - 4, originally uploaded by imarsman.

This is the ant very common in Ontario which one sees building and maintaining small ant hills in sandy soil. Found out this ant is a member of Lasius alienus. All-in-all I've found five species of ant in our front yard and dirt driveway so far this spring. Amazing what you find if you look.

Formica sp. - pallidefulva group

Browsing, originally uploaded by imarsman.

This ant is found foraging all over our front yard garden and driveway, bringing home dead insects, or getting a meal of nectar, as in this photo. I've submitted it for identification to bugguide.net. When it comes upon Acrobat Ants on a Bachelor's Button plant it is chased away. After this it tends ot run around the plant a bit then go back to where it encountered the Acrobat Ants, only to be chased away again.