To me, the pattern on its abdomen is a little work of art: cream-white spots on an orange-brown background. And the macro shot reveals so much more: the fine hairs, the banded legs, even the eyes.

📷 Canon EOS R5 Mark II · RF 100mm F2.8 MACRO
⚙️ 1/250 s · f/9 · ISO 1000 · single shot, no focus stacking
🤚 Handheld, no flash

Credits to @ Borjan

Which crop do you prefer?

Fluorite crystal, 300img stack, bellows lens.

Small, shiny, and often overlooked! 🔍🪵 The common woodlouse shows that even the smallest inhabitants of our environment have beautiful details. Sometimes you just need to look a little closer to discover the beauty of nature! 📸

#Woodlouse #MacroPhotography #TinyWorld #NaturePhotography #Invertebrates

Aphids in the background on the first one…

Shot with MPE-65mm handheld, no stacking.
These pics do show how short the focal length gets at these magnifications…
trickiest part is that those don’t stay in place…

It doesn't take professional gear to take good shots! I took this pic with an old Samsung A15 and did some quick editing in snapseed.

Shot on Fujifilm XT3 with a Minolta MD Macro 50mm f/3.5, Fuji adapter and 1:1 extension.

Shot at f/22, 1/8s, ISO 3200.

Used an RGB LED block for illumination. Honestly, it was somewhat difficult to focus with the extension, as it makes my XT3 front-heavy. The GHNP is an absolute delight for researching rare medicinal plants and mushrooms.

HAIR IN THE EYE

Everyone knows what happens when a hair gets into the eye.

One tiny strand is enough to make us blink, rub, shed tears, and fumble about till we get it out. Eyes are made to see. Hair in the eye is a nuisance. Plain and simple.

Yet there is a creature that wears a whole forest of hair on its eyes.

The honeybee.

I came upon this odd sight when I put a honeybee's eye beneath a microscope lens.

At such close range, an eye no longer looks like an eye. It becomes a vast dome, roofed with thousands of tiny tiles, each laid neatly beside the next. Under slanting light, they shine blue and cold, like steel fresh from the forge.

And there, midst all those tiles, hair grows.

Real hair. With roots and tips. Some strands long, some short. Some stand tall, some lean sideways, and some reach out as though to feel what lies beyond.

How strange!

Nature took such pains to build an eye so finely made, then went and planted hair all over it.

Had it been a human eye, someone would have reached for the tweezers by now.

But the bee sees no need to mend a thing.

She still flies, still seeks out flowers, still finds her way home. Those hairs, which seem so much in the way, help keep dust from her eyes as she goes about her work.

So perhaps what looks like a hindrance may sometimes be part of what lets us see.

I sat looking at the photograph for quite a while.

On one side were the eye's tiny tiles, row upon row, neat and cold. On the other were the slender hairs, growing with no care for straight lines or tidy shapes. Light caught their tips, held there for a breath, then slipped away into the dark.

A world built with such care, yet filled with things that seem so out of place.

It made me think.

We humans like our eyes clear. We want the world before us sharp, clean, and set in order. When something gets in the way, we brush it aside. At times, even what we have yet to understand becomes something we would rather do without.

But the honeybee wears those hairs all her life.

No grumbling. No wish for a new pair of eyes.

I had meant to take a sharp photograph of an eye.

Instead, I found myself lost in the hairs growing upon it.

Perhaps, now and then, to see something worth seeing, we must stop trying to sweep everything out of sight.

Or perhaps there is no need to make so much of it.

The honeybee has hair growing in her eyes.

I have none.

Yet I still get so much wrong.

……

I am primarily a bird photographer, but occasionally something smaller catches my eye. Last weekend, I spent 10 minutes crouched on a beach trying to catch a green beetle flying off a leaf (I missed it) and it made me realize I would really enjoy macro photography. One obsessive deep-dive later, I've got extension tubes in the mail. Excited to post some more photos when I get a chance to play with them!

I found these two little grass-hoppers in a patch of grass in front of my house. I thought red would be a good fit for the scene, so I used a red background. The result turned out a little too bright for the eyes, but I kinda like it anyway 😂

This photo was taken with the XF30mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 lens on my X-H2. Since it's an AF lens, I took full advantage of Fujifilm's built-in autofocus bracketing feature. The result was pretty good, especially considering that the setup was done right there in their natural environment.

📷 Fujifilm XH2 + xf 30mm f2.8 macro 1:1

🔦 Godox v860ii + Diy diffuser.

🔦 Focus light + mini video led light

Stacked 30 frames

Tiny mushroom found on a leaf

This was also my first time using artificial light (I used an Adaptalux light) in my photography. It’s quite subtle I think but I do like the effect it added. I am excited to play around with it more!