Pogo ant with "prize"

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

A morning of ant photography with mediocre results, this is probably the best.

Harvester ants gather all sorts of seeds and store them in the nest for future consumption. The foragers aren't very discriminating in what they bring in, and they end up with a lot of useless junk. The ground around my favorite harvester anthill is littered with little white "seeds" from evergreens that apparently don't pass as food and have been discarded. But presumably the workers who brought them in took satisfaction in "a hard day's work" anyway!"

I'm not sure what this ant has as her cargo, looks like it might be a tiny sliver of quartz. But she carries it as if it were the crown jewels!

Pogo ant
about 2.5x
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Mike Broderick
Oklahoma City, OK, USA

Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

We had some discussion of the MP-E-65 and diffraction when stopped down a month or two ago. I thought some of y'all might be interested in a 100% crop from this shot. This is the head and thorax of the ant at 100%, complete with a dust speck at top center of the crop! I did apply sharpening after cropping. I used a polarizer for this shot, and it may have helped a bit, but did not eliminate the problem with glare I'm having in my ant shots.

pogo ant, about 2.5x, at f/11 (set in camera)


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Mike Broderick
Oklahoma City, OK, USA

Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin

[Bruce Williams]

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw pic2.

Prior to seeing your pic2 I was just thinking about pic1, "Hmmm that's not a bad action shot" ....and then I scrolled down and saw pic2!

Jaw dropped onto lap - eyes widened - head moved closer to screen - specs were adjusted on nose - colourful language (2 words)....

Detail on the head is just amazing

Bruce

[beetleman]

Just amazing Mike. The broadside photo has great focus and DOF. The second picture is incredible with all that super detail. No way is this mediocre
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Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

I'm kind of down on the OOF stem at lower right, and his abdomen actually isn't in focus (though it looks that way at small size!
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Mike Broderick
Oklahoma City, OK, USA

Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin

[rjlittlefield]

It's a beautiful shot, Mike -- I love the texture on these ants!

--Rik

[acerola]

Good sharpness and contrast. Do you know what was the aperture?
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Péter

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

[crotermund]

Wow! Great focus on a difficult subject, Mike. I wouldn't let that stem bother you as photoshop could make that disappear quickly.
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Craig Rotermund
Canon 30D
Sigma 150mm