Skip to main content

Thrifty Thursday: Grasshopper, disassembled

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.


On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.


[HP color laser jet 2840 = $350]

Today's image comes to us from aspiring macro photographer Maxim Piessen, who explains:

A friend and I need to make a paper for school because we are in the last year of high school. Our subject: 'how is an insect built?'

We cut the grasshopper in to parts. I scanned the following parts separately: legs, thorax, head, wings, abdomen.

Then, I put all the parts together in photoshop, selected them, and lined them up.

To get the nice symmetry, I used the mirror technique, reflecting all the parts across a midline.

I whitened the background and added a little more contrast to the final result.

Scanners offer an accessible way to make unusual, and unusually illustrative, images. The disassembled grasshopper was created with regular office equipment and could be used in any entomology textbook.

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