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Thrifty Thursday: Fixed in Amber

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

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.


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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.

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he 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.

More by Alex Wild