1. Place comb upright so that both sides are exposed.
2. Point a flashlight to spotlight the comb.
3. Place the phone camera on the other side of the comb and take a picture.
The iPhone's small lens confers a distorted, almost fisheye perspective to the scene, while backlighting from the flashlight reinforces the effect. The hardest part, true story, was retrieving the comb without getting stung.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
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. Follow Alex Wild on Twitter
