January 26, 2012
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Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.
A winged ant sits fossilized in 15 million year old Dominican amber.
Is enlisting the new iPhone 4s for Thrifty Thursday cheating? I’m not sure. I try to stick below my self-induced $500 threshold. But, how to price a piece of equipment with a monthly data plan? The real cost of an iPhone is surely higher than list, buried behind details of the service contract. For this week, at least, I consider it fair game.
Amber looks beautiful in soft backlighting. Capturing this image was as easy as holding the piece in front of an LCD monitor set to full white and taking a quick snap with my new phone.
About the Author: Alex Wild is an Illinois-based entomologist who studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books, and media outlets. Follow on Twitter @myrmecos.
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Great backlighting! I find myself shooting with my iPhone more and more, just because I ALWAYS have it with me. I took some photos in AMNH’s Gems and Minerals collection this week using the olloclip macro lens for iPhone, with surprisingly good results (and their fisheye lens ain’t bad either.) And at Science Online I tried out the Macro-Easy, a macro lens set into a rubber strap that just slips over your phone. Which is especially nice, because you can wear it on your wrist until you need it.
Link to thisThanks for the recommendation for Macro-Easy, laminda. I’m on the lookout for a good macro adapter and there seem to be a great many to try.
Perhaps I should hit several manufacturers up for demo models and write a review…
Link to thisWay cool. At the Reno Ent Soc meeting I bought my wife pair of ‘bugs in amber’ earrings. Supposedly Dominican amber, one has a male chironomid midge (my id) and one a hymenopteron that my friend the hymenopterist claims is probably a male ant.
Urr, Arghh, have I done something despicable? What is more important: the slightest increment in scientific information or a bauble for my wife? Well, all I know is that my attempts to capture the captured insects pale before this simple shot.
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