DURING SUMMER, the countryside is alive with insects buzzing about or hiding in undergrowth. They are more accessible than any other wildli...
DURING SUMMER, the countryside is alive with insects buzzing about or hiding in undergrowth. They are more accessible than any other wildlife subject in fact, you may not need to venture any further than your own garden to locate subjects. Heathland, meadowland and wetlands are also good places to visit.
Insects are undeniably photogenic even the most entomophobic people find it hard not to be wowed by the beauty, colour and delicacy of butterflies and damselflies. While you can photograph larger insects, like dragonflies and hawk moths, with a telezoom, most bugs are small and require a dedicated close-focusing aid.
A macro lens optimised for close focus and a reproduction ratio of 1:1 is the best choice. Opt for a tele-macro with a focal length of 100mm or longer. While dedicated macro lenses provide 1:1 maximum magnification, shorter lengths require you to get closer to their subject. Insects are typically flighty subjects, so are likely to fly or scurry away if you get close. The longer the focal length, the further away you can be.
As an alternative to a macro lens, close-up filters and auto extension tubes are available cheaply and work by reducing a standard lens’s minimum focusing distance in order to allow it to focus nearer and produce a higher level of magnification. However, these require you to get very close to your subject to achieve decent results.
So why is insect photography so challenging? One reason is that depth of field grows shallower at high magnification. When recording small subjects, depth of field may be wafer thin. Focusing needs to be accurate autofocus systems can struggle to lock on to miniature subjects, so insect photographers are best advised to focus manually. With the zone of acceptable focus being so shallow, you will want to place as much of the subject as possible within the plane of focus. Therefore, careful positioning is important. By placing your camera parallel to the subject, you're able to maximise the available depth-of-field.
Selecting a smaller aperture helps, but results in a slower shutter speed, which is rarely desirable. The other downside of a smaller aperture is more background will be in focus, which can be distracting. You often want to capture a clean, diffused backdrop to help your subject stand out. The more distance between subject and background, the easier it will be to throw the backdrop out of focus so look for subjects to shoot against distant foliage, water or sky.
During daytime, insects are active, so easier to locate, but harder to approach.
When an insect is basking, resting or feeding, approach slowly, avoiding sudden movements. Be aware of the sun’s position and your shadow don't shade your subject or knock surrounding grasses, or you'll almost certainly frighten them away. It is unlikely you will be able to use a tripod during the day, so shoot handheld. Select an aperture large enough to diffuse the background, yet small enough for a sufficient depth of field around f/8 is a good starting point. Increase the ISO to generate a fast enough shutter speed.
Insects are best photographed in the morning and evening when cooler and less active. When warming up in the morning, or settling down in the evening, they may tolerate you setting up a tripod. Not only will this provide stability and aid composition, but you can use LiveView to focus. The light also tends to be more photogenic at either end of the day and the sun’s lower position makes it easier to backlight their subject to create attractive and more dramatic results.
No two days are ever the same when photographing insects. Wildlife is unpredictable, and you can never be sure what you will find.
One of the best times of day to photograph insects is first thing in the morning when subjects are cool and inactive and potentially laden with dew too. Therefore, to give John the best possible photo opportunities, we arranged to meet at 5:30am. Given the anti-social hour we greeted each other slightly bleary-eyed. However, John is an experienced bird and landscape photographer, already accustomed to getting up early in order to capture the best shots. What do they say about the early bird?
John jumped into my car and we headed to a local wetland to look for damselflies. En route we discussed the plan for the day and the challenges ahead. I explained that I wanted him to capture three great close-ups of three different insects, all taken at different reserves. He would need to overcome various challenges for each shot. Our first challenge of the day would be to find a subject to photograph. Insects are still roosting early in the morning, and not moving or flying about. Therefore, you need eagle eyes to spot them motionless and camouflaged among the undergrowth. I explained to John that once you enter a nature reserve you need to watch every step you take so as not to unwittingly harm anything. Locating subjects at such an unearthly hour of the day isn’t easy it can feel like you are looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. But if you know your subjects and local habitats well, experience and instinct will help lead you to the right spots.
Thanks to multiple visits in the past, I already knew that banded demoiselles often overnight among the tall rushes close to the aqueduct here. We both searched the riverbank and finally located a couple of males stunning metallic insects with a distinctive dark band on their wings. They were still cold, inactive and approachable. However, we had a major problem it was blowy and the reeds were swaying about badly. When shooting at high levels of magnification, even the smallest movement is greatly exaggerated, so I knew John would have little chance of taking a sharp shot in the conditions. However, I knew of a slightly more sheltered area beneath some trees and thankfully we got lucky finding a single male resting on a dropwort flower. John set up his tripod and, using his Nikkor 200mm f/4D Micro, began taking closeups. However, despite the shelter, the plant was still swaying about and all John’s first images were ruined by subject blur. We ideally needed to do two things steady the plant and generate a faster shutter speed to help eliminate movement.
I always carry a Wimberley Plamp with me when shooting close-ups, which is an articulated arm with a clamp at each end. I attached one end to my tripod and then carefully clasped the stem of the dropwort with the other. By doing so I was able to stabilise the plant with the demoiselle having not yet warmed-up for the day, it remained perched on top of the flower while I did this. John could now frame his shot accurately. I suggested he used LiveView and carefully focused on the insect’s eyes. John increased the ISO rating to 800 and opted for an aperture of f/8, which recorded most of the subject sharply, while still providing a nicely diffused background. The Nikon D850’s LiveView displays ‘live’ depth-of-field, so we could preview the effect of his aperture choice prior to him actually taking the shot. John took a number of frames, varying his set-up and composition slightly.
John shot for over an hour before the demoiselle finally took flight. As we walked back towards the car, the sun burst through the cloud and we noticed other damselflies flitting about in the early morning warmth.
As we walked, I explained to John that subjects would now be warm, alert and busy making them difficult to get near. Unlike our morning shoot, there would be little chance of using a tripod and focusing would need to be achieved quickly. I mentioned that, with larger subjects like dragonflies, the speed of current AF systems could prove advantageous. However, John’s Nikkor 200mm Micro lens is an older model that is not renowned for its AF speed and is also without image stabilisation. Although John also had a shorter 105mm macro, using it would require him to get even closer to subjects. Therefore, he decided to opt for his 70-200mm telezoom, which has a short minimum focusing distance and boasts Vibration Reduction technology. Combined with the Nikon D850, it would snap into focus quickly and efficiently. Telezooms can be a good choice for dragonflies, allowing photographers to shoot from further away.
The light was bright and quite harsh. Shutter speeds were naturally fast, so John was able to keep the sensitivity below ISO 400 to maximise image quality. To strike the right balance between achieving a workable depth-of-field (to keep his subject acceptably sharp) and one shallow enough to maintain an attractively diffused background, John relied on mid-range apertures in the region of f/8.
There were a good number and variety of dragonflies darting about, but before John began taking photos, we first spent time just watching them in order to see where their preferred perches were. John already knew that dragonflies can be quite territorial and that understanding this type of behaviour can improve your strike-rate. John wanted to photograph a dragonfly resting with a nice, clean background not amongst lots of distracting and messy vegetation. Thankfully, four-spotted chaser dragonflies were regularly resting on tall sedges by the edge of the pond in a position where John could contrast them against the water. We identified a popular perch in a good position. John then stood nearby, waiting. This can be a very successful tactic compared to endlessly chasing them about in the hope one might land in a good spot. Every time a dragonfly returned to the perch, John would slowly move forward to get within picture-taking distance. Sometimes the dragonfly would fly away again, but mostly it remained perched while John positioned and steadied himself prior to focusing and taking his shots. All I could do was offer John some guidance and coaching from the sidelines. But we reviewed his images and checked critical sharpness and composition regularly. I recommended John place negative space in front of the subject rather than behind it, and also that he angled the camera slightly to place the reeds at an angle, rather than perfectly straight to make the composition look more interesting.
We noticed that the out-of-focus highlights on the water were creating an interesting and attractive background, so John adjusted his shooting position slightly so that he could include the sparkling water in the background of his shots. The results had far more impact than his first efforts with a fairly plain backdrop. I told John not to be afraid to take a large number of shots to get the results he wanted as a wildlife photographer, you sometimes have to play the numbers game. He switched to continuous shooting mode and took just over 200 frames in a couple of hours. He ended up with some great handheld shots to choose from.
With such long daylight hours in the summer months, it is impractical to shoot from dawn to dusk, so we decided to get some rest before meeting up again in the evening for a final shoot. Having already photographed a demoiselle and dragonfly, we needed a different subject to complete the day, so we headed to a little Wildlife Trust reserve close to where I live which is a good habitat for butterflies. As soon as we entered the reserve, we spotted skippers and meadow browns on the wing. However, what we really wanted to photograph was the reserve’s speciality marsh fritillary butterflies.
Although we saw a few fritillaries flying past, they were too fast and busy to photograph. Therefore, we decided to wait for the sun to cool down and insects to settle before attempting to take photos. After 8pm, the fritillaries began to bask wings spread in the hazy evening sunshine. Most were settling close to the ground surrounded by vegetation. Then John spotted one resting on an orchid a much better, more colourful backdrop than grasses or sedge. John reverted back to his 200mm Micro lens in order to get a framefilling shot. I advised him to approach slowly and to be mindful of where his shadow was falling. The light was lovely and unlike the morning, the flower the butterfly was perched upon remained perfectly still.
John began by shooting handheld. For all we knew, this might be his one and only opportunity to get a good butterfly image, so we didn’t want to take any risks by setting up a tripod until after he had bagged a few decent images. John tried a few different angles and compositions. The butterfly was positioned in a very awkward low angle, making photography tricky. This is not uncommon when shooting insects, though, and photographers will often have to contort their bodies in order to get correctly positioned. John had to lie on the ground in order to achieve a natural looking and perfectly parallel shooting angle.
Once he had some images he was happy with, I passed him his tripod and he began positioning the legs, being careful not to disturb the butterfly or surrounding vegetation. His Gitzo Systematic tripod is designed without a centre column, making it ideally suited to low-level work. With his camera set up and fixed in position, he was again able to compose and focus with the precision of LiveView. John used his Nikon MC-36 remote release to remotely fire the shutter and to help diffuse the impact of the surrounding vegetation, opting for a wide aperture of f/5. Out-of-focus buttercups and orchids provided a splash of colour, interest and context to John’s images and, even once the sun disappeared, the butterfly continued to bask a while longer before finally closing its wings for the night.
With the light fading fast, we were finished for the day. It had been a tiring day’s photography, but John had been rewarded with some great insect close-ups and we couldn’t wait to look through them on a big screen, once they were downloaded. Time to head back to John’s car, via the pub for a bowl of chips and a refreshing beverage!
Insects are undeniably photogenic even the most entomophobic people find it hard not to be wowed by the beauty, colour and delicacy of butterflies and damselflies. While you can photograph larger insects, like dragonflies and hawk moths, with a telezoom, most bugs are small and require a dedicated close-focusing aid.
A macro lens optimised for close focus and a reproduction ratio of 1:1 is the best choice. Opt for a tele-macro with a focal length of 100mm or longer. While dedicated macro lenses provide 1:1 maximum magnification, shorter lengths require you to get closer to their subject. Insects are typically flighty subjects, so are likely to fly or scurry away if you get close. The longer the focal length, the further away you can be.
As an alternative to a macro lens, close-up filters and auto extension tubes are available cheaply and work by reducing a standard lens’s minimum focusing distance in order to allow it to focus nearer and produce a higher level of magnification. However, these require you to get very close to your subject to achieve decent results.
So why is insect photography so challenging? One reason is that depth of field grows shallower at high magnification. When recording small subjects, depth of field may be wafer thin. Focusing needs to be accurate autofocus systems can struggle to lock on to miniature subjects, so insect photographers are best advised to focus manually. With the zone of acceptable focus being so shallow, you will want to place as much of the subject as possible within the plane of focus. Therefore, careful positioning is important. By placing your camera parallel to the subject, you're able to maximise the available depth-of-field.
Selecting a smaller aperture helps, but results in a slower shutter speed, which is rarely desirable. The other downside of a smaller aperture is more background will be in focus, which can be distracting. You often want to capture a clean, diffused backdrop to help your subject stand out. The more distance between subject and background, the easier it will be to throw the backdrop out of focus so look for subjects to shoot against distant foliage, water or sky.
During daytime, insects are active, so easier to locate, but harder to approach.
When an insect is basking, resting or feeding, approach slowly, avoiding sudden movements. Be aware of the sun’s position and your shadow don't shade your subject or knock surrounding grasses, or you'll almost certainly frighten them away. It is unlikely you will be able to use a tripod during the day, so shoot handheld. Select an aperture large enough to diffuse the background, yet small enough for a sufficient depth of field around f/8 is a good starting point. Increase the ISO to generate a fast enough shutter speed.
Insects are best photographed in the morning and evening when cooler and less active. When warming up in the morning, or settling down in the evening, they may tolerate you setting up a tripod. Not only will this provide stability and aid composition, but you can use LiveView to focus. The light also tends to be more photogenic at either end of the day and the sun’s lower position makes it easier to backlight their subject to create attractive and more dramatic results.
No two days are ever the same when photographing insects. Wildlife is unpredictable, and you can never be sure what you will find.
CHALLENGE in insect photography 1: Windy Weather
One of the best times of day to photograph insects is first thing in the morning when subjects are cool and inactive and potentially laden with dew too. Therefore, to give John the best possible photo opportunities, we arranged to meet at 5:30am. Given the anti-social hour we greeted each other slightly bleary-eyed. However, John is an experienced bird and landscape photographer, already accustomed to getting up early in order to capture the best shots. What do they say about the early bird?
John jumped into my car and we headed to a local wetland to look for damselflies. En route we discussed the plan for the day and the challenges ahead. I explained that I wanted him to capture three great close-ups of three different insects, all taken at different reserves. He would need to overcome various challenges for each shot. Our first challenge of the day would be to find a subject to photograph. Insects are still roosting early in the morning, and not moving or flying about. Therefore, you need eagle eyes to spot them motionless and camouflaged among the undergrowth. I explained to John that once you enter a nature reserve you need to watch every step you take so as not to unwittingly harm anything. Locating subjects at such an unearthly hour of the day isn’t easy it can feel like you are looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. But if you know your subjects and local habitats well, experience and instinct will help lead you to the right spots.
Thanks to multiple visits in the past, I already knew that banded demoiselles often overnight among the tall rushes close to the aqueduct here. We both searched the riverbank and finally located a couple of males stunning metallic insects with a distinctive dark band on their wings. They were still cold, inactive and approachable. However, we had a major problem it was blowy and the reeds were swaying about badly. When shooting at high levels of magnification, even the smallest movement is greatly exaggerated, so I knew John would have little chance of taking a sharp shot in the conditions. However, I knew of a slightly more sheltered area beneath some trees and thankfully we got lucky finding a single male resting on a dropwort flower. John set up his tripod and, using his Nikkor 200mm f/4D Micro, began taking closeups. However, despite the shelter, the plant was still swaying about and all John’s first images were ruined by subject blur. We ideally needed to do two things steady the plant and generate a faster shutter speed to help eliminate movement.
I always carry a Wimberley Plamp with me when shooting close-ups, which is an articulated arm with a clamp at each end. I attached one end to my tripod and then carefully clasped the stem of the dropwort with the other. By doing so I was able to stabilise the plant with the demoiselle having not yet warmed-up for the day, it remained perched on top of the flower while I did this. John could now frame his shot accurately. I suggested he used LiveView and carefully focused on the insect’s eyes. John increased the ISO rating to 800 and opted for an aperture of f/8, which recorded most of the subject sharply, while still providing a nicely diffused background. The Nikon D850’s LiveView displays ‘live’ depth-of-field, so we could preview the effect of his aperture choice prior to him actually taking the shot. John took a number of frames, varying his set-up and composition slightly.
John shot for over an hour before the demoiselle finally took flight. As we walked back towards the car, the sun burst through the cloud and we noticed other damselflies flitting about in the early morning warmth.
CHALLENGE in insect photography 2: Shooting Handheld
After our well-deserved brekkie, we drove to Meeth Quarry in North Devon a nature reserve renowned locally for dragonflies. The wind had dropped and the skies were mostly clear and blue it was promising to be a lovely summer’s day. As we walked through the reserve towards the main ponds, we noticed butterflies and damselflies flitting about and even spotted a common lizard basking in the late morning sunshine. However, we had our hearts set on photographing dragonflies.As we walked, I explained to John that subjects would now be warm, alert and busy making them difficult to get near. Unlike our morning shoot, there would be little chance of using a tripod and focusing would need to be achieved quickly. I mentioned that, with larger subjects like dragonflies, the speed of current AF systems could prove advantageous. However, John’s Nikkor 200mm Micro lens is an older model that is not renowned for its AF speed and is also without image stabilisation. Although John also had a shorter 105mm macro, using it would require him to get even closer to subjects. Therefore, he decided to opt for his 70-200mm telezoom, which has a short minimum focusing distance and boasts Vibration Reduction technology. Combined with the Nikon D850, it would snap into focus quickly and efficiently. Telezooms can be a good choice for dragonflies, allowing photographers to shoot from further away.
The light was bright and quite harsh. Shutter speeds were naturally fast, so John was able to keep the sensitivity below ISO 400 to maximise image quality. To strike the right balance between achieving a workable depth-of-field (to keep his subject acceptably sharp) and one shallow enough to maintain an attractively diffused background, John relied on mid-range apertures in the region of f/8.
There were a good number and variety of dragonflies darting about, but before John began taking photos, we first spent time just watching them in order to see where their preferred perches were. John already knew that dragonflies can be quite territorial and that understanding this type of behaviour can improve your strike-rate. John wanted to photograph a dragonfly resting with a nice, clean background not amongst lots of distracting and messy vegetation. Thankfully, four-spotted chaser dragonflies were regularly resting on tall sedges by the edge of the pond in a position where John could contrast them against the water. We identified a popular perch in a good position. John then stood nearby, waiting. This can be a very successful tactic compared to endlessly chasing them about in the hope one might land in a good spot. Every time a dragonfly returned to the perch, John would slowly move forward to get within picture-taking distance. Sometimes the dragonfly would fly away again, but mostly it remained perched while John positioned and steadied himself prior to focusing and taking his shots. All I could do was offer John some guidance and coaching from the sidelines. But we reviewed his images and checked critical sharpness and composition regularly. I recommended John place negative space in front of the subject rather than behind it, and also that he angled the camera slightly to place the reeds at an angle, rather than perfectly straight to make the composition look more interesting.
We noticed that the out-of-focus highlights on the water were creating an interesting and attractive background, so John adjusted his shooting position slightly so that he could include the sparkling water in the background of his shots. The results had far more impact than his first efforts with a fairly plain backdrop. I told John not to be afraid to take a large number of shots to get the results he wanted as a wildlife photographer, you sometimes have to play the numbers game. He switched to continuous shooting mode and took just over 200 frames in a couple of hours. He ended up with some great handheld shots to choose from.
CHALLENGE in insect photography 3: Low level Shooting
With such long daylight hours in the summer months, it is impractical to shoot from dawn to dusk, so we decided to get some rest before meeting up again in the evening for a final shoot. Having already photographed a demoiselle and dragonfly, we needed a different subject to complete the day, so we headed to a little Wildlife Trust reserve close to where I live which is a good habitat for butterflies. As soon as we entered the reserve, we spotted skippers and meadow browns on the wing. However, what we really wanted to photograph was the reserve’s speciality marsh fritillary butterflies.
Although we saw a few fritillaries flying past, they were too fast and busy to photograph. Therefore, we decided to wait for the sun to cool down and insects to settle before attempting to take photos. After 8pm, the fritillaries began to bask wings spread in the hazy evening sunshine. Most were settling close to the ground surrounded by vegetation. Then John spotted one resting on an orchid a much better, more colourful backdrop than grasses or sedge. John reverted back to his 200mm Micro lens in order to get a framefilling shot. I advised him to approach slowly and to be mindful of where his shadow was falling. The light was lovely and unlike the morning, the flower the butterfly was perched upon remained perfectly still.
John began by shooting handheld. For all we knew, this might be his one and only opportunity to get a good butterfly image, so we didn’t want to take any risks by setting up a tripod until after he had bagged a few decent images. John tried a few different angles and compositions. The butterfly was positioned in a very awkward low angle, making photography tricky. This is not uncommon when shooting insects, though, and photographers will often have to contort their bodies in order to get correctly positioned. John had to lie on the ground in order to achieve a natural looking and perfectly parallel shooting angle.
Once he had some images he was happy with, I passed him his tripod and he began positioning the legs, being careful not to disturb the butterfly or surrounding vegetation. His Gitzo Systematic tripod is designed without a centre column, making it ideally suited to low-level work. With his camera set up and fixed in position, he was again able to compose and focus with the precision of LiveView. John used his Nikon MC-36 remote release to remotely fire the shutter and to help diffuse the impact of the surrounding vegetation, opting for a wide aperture of f/5. Out-of-focus buttercups and orchids provided a splash of colour, interest and context to John’s images and, even once the sun disappeared, the butterfly continued to bask a while longer before finally closing its wings for the night.
With the light fading fast, we were finished for the day. It had been a tiring day’s photography, but John had been rewarded with some great insect close-ups and we couldn’t wait to look through them on a big screen, once they were downloaded. Time to head back to John’s car, via the pub for a bowl of chips and a refreshing beverage!
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