! I feel the same way about them. They are challenging!

These are actually highly artistic and compelling! I see high ranking entries that remind me of these in photo contests.
A trick to try is to drag out the shutter to create trails of the little buggers in flight. This to convey their movement.
Well done!!

They are all quite nice. Focus bracketing has certain advantages, but I am finding that now I pretty much always attempt f.b., and the work flow time has gone way up and so has the backlog of unprocessed pictures.

A very good set!
Foraging bees and wasps will not sting, unless they get trapped against you while they fly away. You can get right up close.

We were at about 99%. Totality was about a two hour drive away, but I had teaching obligations. It was still very impressive (I hear).

Interesting! I have not heard of this lens, but it looks like a near clone of the Laowa f/2.8 2.5-5x. I wonder if the company is really Venus/Laowa under a different label. How that all works is puzzling to me.

I suppose that could be a queen, making paper for her nest.

Jumping Bristletails are among the weirder insects. By some respects, they are the most 'primitive' of insects. Genetic comparisons show that insects are in the Pancrustacea, a group of arthropods that is mostly Crustacea. One relic of that relationship with the Crustacea are the bi-ramous limbs, wh...

Interesting results. I don't know anything about the lens.

Always a pleasure to see your stuff. After being with a dual head flash for some time, this season I am prepared to try a single head flash and a big 'ol conical diffuser. But one is sort of pushed into encircling the lower part of the diffuser face around the lens, so you get those single highlight...

Locust borer eggs are laid in cracks in the bark of the host tree: https://wiki.bugwood.org/HPIPM:Locust_Borer but I could not find an ID for these eggs. You will see plenty of the adult beetles in the late summer if you plant goldenrod. The adults pretty much live on those, it seems. They are just ...

Excellent pictures!

Great restults! I especially like the 2nd one.

Such cool critters, and excellent pictures!

I too am very sad of this news. I would always give his many posts a priority look, since they were always to exacting and good.