Wallydraigle
Banned
Whenever you take a picture you have to make a choice between getting as close as you can to something and showing it in as much detail as you can, or backing off from it and getting the whole subject inside the frame. This is an especially important consideration for me when I am shooting a long-legged spider, or an insect with antennae longer than its body, or something of that nature. Ususally the most effective photograph is the result of choosing a composition somewhere between the two extremes.
A technique of mine is to exploit something I call level of observation. Take a look at this example. In this picture is a crab spider sitting in a daisy eating another spider. Many spiders are opportunistic canibals by the way. It's a pretty good picture. I've posted several pictures like this before. But the "problem" with it, if you want to call it that, is that it doesn't really change our level of observation. It's interesting. It might show someone what they've never had the chance to see before, but they are still seeing it at the same level as someone bending over and looking at a flower with a spider sitting in it. Notice that this picture is taken from a perspecive that is just about as close as you can get and still show the subject in its entirety.
This picture was taken just a monent after the first. It shows the same scene, with the same participants, same lighting, same everything basically, however this time our level of observation is different. We are no longer casual observers bending over looking at a spider. This is the perspective from which spiders look at each other, or a spider's prey might look back at it. Notice that significant parts of the spider and some of the prey are not shown in the frame. This is part of the trick, along with the sheer increase in magnification. A spider cannot see all of itself, just as we can only see a part of ourselves at any given time. When a prey is being captured by a spider, it cannot see all of the spider, because it's too close. In this picture we are observing from a position that is too close to see all of the spider! We are in the spider's direct sphere of influence, and it is observing us as well. In my opinion this is the more powerful photograph. It's also a lot more challenging to pull off. Tiny creatures do not like six foot tall humans entering their level of observation!😉
What would a picture thread be without gratuitous whoring of photography? Almost all of my pictures today are spiders. It was totally by accident. When I'm out looking for stuff to shoot I can't help what I find. These were all taken today by the way.
Another jumping spider. I am especially fond of these guys, as I'm sure you've noticed sine a large percentage of the photos I post on here are of these. Jumping spiders always have two eyes that are much larger than their other six, and they use them for stereoscopic vision, just like us. It almost looks like it is wearing goggles. I took several shots of this one, and couldn't decide which was the best, so here's another shot of the same spider. Very cool stuff.
The last thing many insects see before they buy the big bug jug in the sky. It's got something dirty-looking on it, I'm not sure what. Here's that level of observation thing again.
And some non-spider stuff:
Finger lickin good. This is the same kind of hopper that I posted sitting in the dandelion the other day. I was watching him through the viewfinder, thinking about the shot, he raised his foot to his mouth, and I snapped the picture, and here it is.
Hoverfly in a daisy. I wish I would have shifted the camera a millimeter to the left, but I guess it doesn't really matter. With the kind of photos I post here, a lot of times moving the camera just one single millimeter in any direction can totally ruin a shot. That's not an exaggeration either. Hoverflies mimic bees, and eat pollen and nectar from flowers like bees. They have no stings though, and are totally harmless to people. The water drop on its compound eyes is cool.
Cleavers flowers. Cleavers are those plants with the tiny hairs on the leaves and stems making all parts of the plant stick to your clothes. They have worls of knife-shaped leaves on long stems. The flowers are only a couple of millimeters across. They usually only have four petals per flower, but this one has five, so that's pretty neat. The hooks on the seed cases look like spun glass. They are usually considered a rank weed, but up close like this they're pretty cool.
If anybody remembers the springtail from last time, I got a shot of one sitting on my fingertip. It's realy cool. I had my lens racked out to the max magnification, and I swear in the full rez photo I can see epidermal cells in my fingerprints. If I did the math right this lens is supposed to be able to resolve details as fine as two microns, so I guess it's possible. I'll have to find it though. Maybe I can post it next time.
Let me know what you think. If anybody else has any pictures of tiny stuff, go ahead and post them if you want to. I like to look at pictures as much as anybody, and I get bored just looking through my own stuff😉 If you post something, please resize it. There are still a few people on slow dial-up. I'm on 24k right now and it's not much fun🙁
A technique of mine is to exploit something I call level of observation. Take a look at this example. In this picture is a crab spider sitting in a daisy eating another spider. Many spiders are opportunistic canibals by the way. It's a pretty good picture. I've posted several pictures like this before. But the "problem" with it, if you want to call it that, is that it doesn't really change our level of observation. It's interesting. It might show someone what they've never had the chance to see before, but they are still seeing it at the same level as someone bending over and looking at a flower with a spider sitting in it. Notice that this picture is taken from a perspecive that is just about as close as you can get and still show the subject in its entirety.
This picture was taken just a monent after the first. It shows the same scene, with the same participants, same lighting, same everything basically, however this time our level of observation is different. We are no longer casual observers bending over looking at a spider. This is the perspective from which spiders look at each other, or a spider's prey might look back at it. Notice that significant parts of the spider and some of the prey are not shown in the frame. This is part of the trick, along with the sheer increase in magnification. A spider cannot see all of itself, just as we can only see a part of ourselves at any given time. When a prey is being captured by a spider, it cannot see all of the spider, because it's too close. In this picture we are observing from a position that is too close to see all of the spider! We are in the spider's direct sphere of influence, and it is observing us as well. In my opinion this is the more powerful photograph. It's also a lot more challenging to pull off. Tiny creatures do not like six foot tall humans entering their level of observation!😉
What would a picture thread be without gratuitous whoring of photography? Almost all of my pictures today are spiders. It was totally by accident. When I'm out looking for stuff to shoot I can't help what I find. These were all taken today by the way.
Another jumping spider. I am especially fond of these guys, as I'm sure you've noticed sine a large percentage of the photos I post on here are of these. Jumping spiders always have two eyes that are much larger than their other six, and they use them for stereoscopic vision, just like us. It almost looks like it is wearing goggles. I took several shots of this one, and couldn't decide which was the best, so here's another shot of the same spider. Very cool stuff.
The last thing many insects see before they buy the big bug jug in the sky. It's got something dirty-looking on it, I'm not sure what. Here's that level of observation thing again.
And some non-spider stuff:
Finger lickin good. This is the same kind of hopper that I posted sitting in the dandelion the other day. I was watching him through the viewfinder, thinking about the shot, he raised his foot to his mouth, and I snapped the picture, and here it is.
Hoverfly in a daisy. I wish I would have shifted the camera a millimeter to the left, but I guess it doesn't really matter. With the kind of photos I post here, a lot of times moving the camera just one single millimeter in any direction can totally ruin a shot. That's not an exaggeration either. Hoverflies mimic bees, and eat pollen and nectar from flowers like bees. They have no stings though, and are totally harmless to people. The water drop on its compound eyes is cool.
Cleavers flowers. Cleavers are those plants with the tiny hairs on the leaves and stems making all parts of the plant stick to your clothes. They have worls of knife-shaped leaves on long stems. The flowers are only a couple of millimeters across. They usually only have four petals per flower, but this one has five, so that's pretty neat. The hooks on the seed cases look like spun glass. They are usually considered a rank weed, but up close like this they're pretty cool.
If anybody remembers the springtail from last time, I got a shot of one sitting on my fingertip. It's realy cool. I had my lens racked out to the max magnification, and I swear in the full rez photo I can see epidermal cells in my fingerprints. If I did the math right this lens is supposed to be able to resolve details as fine as two microns, so I guess it's possible. I'll have to find it though. Maybe I can post it next time.
Let me know what you think. If anybody else has any pictures of tiny stuff, go ahead and post them if you want to. I like to look at pictures as much as anybody, and I get bored just looking through my own stuff😉 If you post something, please resize it. There are still a few people on slow dial-up. I'm on 24k right now and it's not much fun🙁
