Macro

Tarantula hawk wasp Tarantulas are one of the largest spider groups on the planet with leg spans that could more than cover the palm of your hand.  Although their venom is not all that powerful (on a scale from meaningless to deadly to humans within half an hour), the fangs and sheer volume of poison together are enough to incapacitate any invertebrate unlucky enough to encounter it.  Add to that stiff, bristly hairs and thick exoskeleton and you have an eight legged fortress complete with arsenal.  What could possibly do harm to that? The answer, in western Arizona anyways, is the Tarantula hawk wasp.  The wasp itself is a beauty to behold.  Deep bluish black in colour with geometrically arranged antennae and a powerful thorax to drive their four wings, these are some of the largest wasps in the world.  The adults themselves feed on nectar.  I was out for a walk early in the morning in June, the temperature already in the high 80's (over 30° C) a...

Monarch Butterfly The monarch butterfly is well known in much of North America because of its migratory habits.  It is one of the few insects which travels north to south then north again taking advantage of warm winters further south.  The weird thing about this photo is that it wasn't taken in North America; it was taken in the Caribbean.  I thought that was pretty amazing; how did a monarch butterfly get to St. Maarten?  I suppose there are a lot of answers, one of them being it may have been blown there from a storm and been fortunate enough to come down on land rather than over open ocean.  However, if I thought that was strange, I was in for a shocker last week. We have been travelling in New Zealand over the last three weeks.  There are a lot of invasive species which have taken up residence here, many plants and animals which are either innocuous to the environment or devastating to it.  Good examples of nasty additions include broom and ...

Frittilary Butterfly According to the Butterflies at Home site (www.butterfliesathome.com/fritillary-butterflies.htm), the frittilary butterfly is so named because of the chess board checkered pattern which adorns its wings.  I don not know the particular species which I photographed, but I know it is a Fritillary because I met a couple who were clearly more passionate about butterflies than I was.  They were equipped with nets and books and were eagerly moving from area to area looking for any form of adult lepidoptera which happened to show itself.  What impressed me was that they gently captured and released each individual, holding onto it only long enough to identify what it was.  I don't recall if they told me about the particular species, but learned enough to go and record the name on my file. I shot this using my 80-400 mm lens.  It a favourite lens of mine because of its lightening fast focusing abilities.  On my APS-C sensor camera it behav...

Hover fly Hover flies are a group of flies which are particularly fond of visiting flowers.  They behave very much like bees in that they are there for the pollen and nectar.  Hover flies are mostly a beneficial group that facilitate pollination. It is easy to tell a fly from a bee if you can get close enough to it.  A fly has only one pair of wings while a bee has two pairs of wings.  Some hover flies are excellent bee or wasp mimics and look remarkably similar to them, but they have no stinger or strong biting jaws.  Hover flies are in fact docile and really only want to be left alone to feed and produce a host of young.

Ground beetle I enjoy taking the time to do macro photography.  The best part of it is looking for, and discovering, interesting organisms.  Ground beetles are no exception.  Even though there are thousands of different species, and many of them look similar, finding one is always exciting.  They are common under rocks and especially logs or rotting wood.  The large, black beetles may be a concern to some, but most of them are actually beneficial. Ground beetles are carnivorous, both larvae and adults, and consume a wide variety of pesky little organisms that do cause damage to plants.  They are easy to catch and any child would be tickled getting a chance to see one up close.  They do have somewhat formidable jaws and some have been known to bite, but that has never been my experience. If you look carefully at this one, you will notice a yellowish blob sitting just under the roof of its wing covers over the abdomen.  There is one on both ...

Macro Photography, Close Up I am very interested in macro photography and enjoy photographing small, wonderful things.  I have been actively shooting macro images for about 40 years now and teach a class on the subject.  My first book, "Macro Photography, Close Up," is self published and is used in my courses. I felt it was high time to put together a second edition of the book and am completely revising it.  I hope to have it completed early in the 2019 year.  It will be approximately 80 pages and will have about 150 full colour photos, all done by myself.  I intend on making it available in print or as an e-book.  You can go to ericspix.com to order - contact me through email eric@ericspix.com .