Cockroach by moonlight
This was an experiment with light. I had one flash mounted above the subject aimed directly down to light up the watery surface of the leaf, and one aimed directly up from below the leaf, to spill around it and light up the outline of the cockroach. I sharpened it as much as possible in the hopes of introducing halos to further the effect. Hopefully the effect seen is that of a cockroach that appears to be vaguely lit by a full moon. Iwokrama reserve, Peru.
Bright translucence
Rather than just using the flash for a 'moonlight' style effect I have been trying to shoot at night without flash. Using only my flashlight to illuminate the subject you can make out the brilliant outline of this semi-translucent spiny caterpillar. The flashlight was oriented from above and behind as can be seen by the bright 'moon' in the top right corner. Iwokrama reserve, Guyana.
This isn't always successful though, as the long shutter times mean that if I want more of the subject to show up and not be obscured in darkness then I need longer shutter times which will show motion blur. When I get my 5Dii back from the shop then I will experiment with higher ISO's which just aren't possible with an acceptable level of quality in the 7D. Here I like the otherwordly green colours but the motion blur and oof elements ruin it for me.
Having shot 'by moonlight' naturally I had to shoot by 'sunrise' so:
Froggy sunrise
This shot was taken at night believe it or not. It required mostly just a lot of manual dexterity. I didn't use flash either! I held the flashlight behind the frog and with the same hand, held the leaf behind it. I let the flashlight shine through my fingers on high power so that it gave the reddish glow. I had to maneuver the flashlight, fingers, leaf all with one hand while shooting with the other. This gave me a uniform reddish glow. Okay, but I want the sunrise! So I slightly splayed my fingers to let the more intense light through, but only at the bottom of the shot. At the top I kept my fingers held gradually tighter. This led to the gradation seen in a usual sunrise. Iwokrama reserve, Guyana.
For the above examples, even the lowest flash setting will ruin the effect, so it really needs to be done all without flash. I'll dig up my EXIF data and post it under the shots when I get a chance as well.
Ants in motion
I tried to do a panning shot to capture the movement of the ants. This was made extremely difficult by the low light, the erratic speed of the leafcutters and the slope of the terrain. This is the best of about 200 shots. I plan on taking more because I think that one could get a really awesome shot if one were to get the speed of the panning just right. Tukeit, Guyana.
More to come later, Comments and C&C are very welcome as this section will be in a constant state of evolution.
Paul
