so to my knowledge I think I have only ever posted one stack on here. In part it is because I am not a huge fan of most of my work and I lack the finesse and beautiful level of skill that many members possess. The other reason is because I am disorganised
So here are 6 of my better stacks- only one of which I am personally proud of.
However, maybe the subject material may be less well known and interesting to you. I will leave my favourite until last.
I will start with this: it is a Eurytomid wasp, possibly of the genus Eurytoma but I'm not entirely certain. Numerous species are classical parasitoids where they lay their eggs in a host, with the larvae eating and eventually killing them. In this case however, I suspect that it is a seed 'parasitoid,' although in many cases it is unclear whether the larvae are eating the seeds or if they are eating another insect that has laid its eggs in the seeds already.
I shot this with a Nikon 4x BE objective with a Raynox DCR 150 on bellows, with a Sony a6000 and two janjso lights.
Nothing to write home about in terms of artistry, not least because I am awful at using Photoshop, but it was also intended to be clear and concise. I also removed the other legs and antenna for that reason. The wings truncated as well, but look, pretty wasp!
The second is my first attempt at an ant image. This is Formica rufa, or a 'wood ant,' which is one of the larger, more robust species of ant in the British Isles, which is an otherwise depauperate place to be. I was walking through a heath on the way back from a collection day when amongst the many wood ants I noticed one of distinctly different colouration to the rest. My initial thought was that maybe there was some socially parasitic species I was unaware of, or a male perhaps? I took it home to find out. Turned out to be a queen, which was actually a surprise because of how peculiarly similar in size it was to a worker.
Colonies can reach pretty impressive sizes of over 10,000, and in Ants: Nature's Secret Power, the documentary claims that a single mature colony can prey on over 10 million arthropods in a single year.
I took 187 images with a 10x BE, stacked in Helicon with method C, with two Janjso lights. I can't quite remember if I used a 135mm lens to reduce the magnification or not. I think so, because this is a fairly large ant.
Not the greatest, but it went down well on Facebook. I am picky about it, but I hope you like it anyway.
The third is another wasp (there is a theme here- my passion is Hymenoptera, and particularly parasitic wasps), which is an Ichneumonid by the name of Trychosis legator. Unfortunately I don't know much else about it, except that is one of over 2000 species in Britain alone. Indeed it is the most species rich family of all wasps, and potentially on the entire planet, with well over 70,000 species depending on which source you read!
It also has a fetching face. And an attractive backside as you will see
I don't remember how many images this one had, but it was shot at full mag with the 10x and stacked with method C. 
I was very happy with the way the face turned out for this, in spite of the obvious cracking of the pigments in the eyes, but in this case I don't mind that- it's sort of aesthetically pleasing compared to other images where this happens. I've read of Decon 90 as a possible remedy, but have yet to try anything out.
Here is the ovipositor. Again I forget how many images it was, but I'm a big fan of method C and two Jansjso lights
The next is a wasp from the Pteromalidae family. Again, this family is huge, and some authors think that the superfamily it belongs to would absolutely and easily have in the region of 1 million species. This is Lamptrotatus, from the subgenus Skleroceras (fusion of the final two segments to form the club of the antennae). Actually I will add another image of Lamprotatus splendens to give an idea of just how beautiful this genus is, but it isn't the most aesthetically pleasing stack.
Nikon 10x BE and Raynox, 112 images.
Not happy with the out-of-focus part underneath, and I had to do some fairly heavy cloning work, but all in all it's OK. I would like to get a fresh specimen and get a really good stack with it.
This was an image I made at the Natural History Museum in London with their stacking kit last Summer. It was around 40 images with a Canon mpe 65 and a 700D.
Finally, my favourite image so far is of another ant, Myrmica scarbinodis. A fairly unassuming genus generally, but I found them quite beautiful once I got them under a microscope, with their semi-translucent areas and deep ridges.
This was 191 images, with fairly minimal editing. I added a third light for the top of the head because I quite liked the look of cool blue contrasting with the warmer light from the Janjsos at the bottom of the head.
I know this isn't a perfect shot, but it is as close to it as I have yet achieved.
Any help and comments would be greatly appreciated and I hope you like the set. Apologies for going over 6 images to the admins- I added the shot of splendens to show off its beauty
