insect

For photographer David Joseph, all it takes to capture stunning macro shots of insects and plants is his smartphone and a mobile macro lens.

Researchers from Australia have reverse engineered the visual system of hoverflies, an insect that feeds on nectar, to detect the acoustic signature of drones from as far as four kilometers away (about 2.5 miles) even in noisy environments.

A group of international robotics researchers has developed an urban search and rescue solution that skirts past the current limitations of miniature robotics through what they are calling an insect computer hybrid system, which fuses a living insect platform with a microcontroller.

The late nature photographer Andreas Kay shot this incredible clip of a tiny insect in Ecuador that looks just like a piece of popcorn walking around.

Each print that I create is a composite of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of individual photos digitally stitched together. Using a method of macro photography called “photo stacking” it’s possible to create images with an incredible amount of detail, even when printed on a very large scale.

I'm a bug enthusiast and macro photographer, and I was recently fortunate enough to photograph a wasp fighting a tarantula. It felt like winning the lottery.

Japanese artist Yoshiyuki Katayama's creation Umwelt is only part timelapse. Because while the flowers in this beautiful film bloom at timelapse speeds, insects crawl across the surface of the flowers as if in real time.

I suppose like most photographers I have a “photographic bucket-list”, and documenting the life-cycle of the much maligned mosquito has always been high on that list. Like many of my projects, this turned out to be quite the undertaking filled with many challenging and unique problems.

Researchers at Stanford University want to give your drone superpowers. Okay maybe not superpowers, but they have developed a drone that can land on walls and ceilings, clinging there like a robotic insect.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to achieve high magnification in your photography, you need to know about the reverse lens macro photography technique. Reverse lens macro photography has allowed me to achieve the magnification I couldn’t come close to with my more expensive equipment.

Two years ago we dubbed photographer Thomas Shahan ‘the Bob Ross of bug photography.’ Today, we’re back with a video from the macro master in which he dives into his workflow in the field, dropping bits and pieces of useful knowledge as he goes through a daily shoot.

Mimicking animal and bug vision to create unique and interesting cameras is nothing new. Bug vision cameras with, for example, infinite depth of field, have been made in the lab before. But researchers at University of Queensland in Australia are developing a camera that can do something pretty unique: it can see cancer.

The idea came after the scientists discovered that mantis shrimp have this incredibly useful ability.

There are DIY projects that just about anybody can do -- for example, turning an old film canister into a flashlight -- and there are DIY projects that have a very specific "Y" in mind.

The ArnoSync High-Speed photography rig falls into the latter category. But even if you don't have the engineering prowess to build it yourself, it's still worth taking a look at what this home-brew rig can do.

So you want to create stirring nature documentaries. You could go the National Geographic way and risk trench-foot, snakebite and more in pursuit of the scenic wild. Or you could take the Boris Godfroid route: Schlep a few hundred pounds of bricks into a spare room, cover it with moss and other forgiving plant life, and let nature run wild in miniature.

Back in 2010, we featured the beautiful macro bug photographs of a Belgian photographer named Frans, who uses a custom laser camera rig to capture insects mid-flight. Inspired by fotoopa's work, biochemist and photography enthusiast Linden Gledhill decided to pursue the same photographic subject.

California-based entomologist Shaun Winterton was browsing Flickr back in May 2011, when he discovered a new species of insect.

That's right: he made a scientific discovery by simply looking at pictures online.

Photographer Nicholas Hendrickx has a quirky photo series titled "The Adventures Of Mr. Fly" in that features macro photographs of a (presumably dead) fly engaging in various human activities.

Brothers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas, the same UK-based duo who created a remote-control BeetleCam to photograph wildlife in Africa, decided to get up-close and personal with some of nature's less desirable creatures. The two originally noticed mosquito larvae in stagnant water sitting in the backyard of their home, and decided they'd found their next photo subjects. They patiently set up the photo shoot, waiting for key moment when the adult mosquitoes emerged from their larval state. It's fascinating how delicate and alien the pesky critter is up-close:

Their patience and planning went a long way, Will tells us:
We did a bit of research into their development and discovered that it takes about 1-2 weeks (depending on the temperature) for them to develop into the adult form. This gave us a good amount of time to devise a set up to photograph them as they emerged.

Over the course of about 14 days, we kept a keen eye on their development. We kept the larvae in a glass of distilled water indoors and covered it with perforated cling film - we didn't want to suffer any bites during the night! Once the larvae had turned into pupae, we knew they were close to hatching. We soon discovered that when one straightened out, we had about 5 minutes until they hatched.

Belgian photographer fotoopa (“photo grandpa” in Dutch) …