Earlier, I blogged about one of my flash diffusers, and about how most flash macro photography is improved by softening the flash’s harsh artificial light. My observations were not novel, of course, and I love spying on the various contraptions macrophotographers invent as they aim for perfect diffusion. See, for example, recent posts by Seth [...]

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [HP deskjet F4280 printer/scanner - $150] This week’s inexpensive photo project makes use of a desktop scanner to translate a living plant into a digital specimen. Creating virtual natural history collections is an activity well-suited for elementary school science classrooms, for children old enough [...]

In honor of Mother’s day, I present a portrait of a Tennessee winnow ant with her mom. But wait! This scene is not as heart-warming as it may seem. This mother has a dark past of murder, impersonation, and trickery. To explain the story, I’ll start with a perhaps oversimplified observation about ant families. Ants [...]

A South American Mischocyttarus paper wasp hangs out on its characteristically long nest. The nest is made of chewed, processed plant fibers, similar to those of our temperate paper wasps but taking a much more unusual form. How long is the nest? Warm up your scrolling muscles! Here is a life-size photograph: photo details: Canon EF 17-40mm [...]

Elise Andrew runs the most popular Science page on facebook. I know so, because I see her content reshared dozens of times daily in my news feed. Well, it’s not really her content, but I’ll get back to that in a minute. The point is, I F*cking Love Science is big. By posting photos, cartoons, news [...]

In the comments, HBG_Dave makes a salient observation: I’ve always wondered why I like your photographs even though my personal theme has always been maximum sharp focus (not that I get it very often) and I tend to consider any blurring as a flaw. I think it must be because your compositions use the range [...]

As you know, I photograph ants. Lots of them. There’s good reason for this, aside from my formal training as an ant biologist. Ants and other social insects make fascinating subjects. Their social habits parallel our own enough, perhaps, to allow us the illusion of relating to the insects. In ants, we see a little [...]

“Science Photography” can be read two ways: 1. as illustration of scientific subject matter, or 2. as a tool to gather data as part of the scientific process. What’s the difference? Images can be intended to convey information, or to collect it. Most science photography, including the majority of images featured in this blog, is of [...]

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [iPhone 4S - $336] The best camera is the one you have with you, they say. And when I saw the afternoon sun filtering through this palmetto leaf in Gainesville’s Austin Cary Forest last week I had to take a shot. Simple patterns in [...]

Stop whatever you are doing now and click on this: It’s a massive image composited from several days of captures by the Mars Curiosity rover. The level of detail is astounding. You could spend days zooming around in there looking at martian rocks. It’s accomplishments like this that make me proud of my species.