Thursday, June 30, 2011


Ant eye to eye
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.
A red wood ant. These insects fascinated me ever since I was a little boy. There's something about the size of them and their anthills that impressed me.
Over in the west where I live these are not very common but in the wooded areas in the south you find these a lot more. They will feed on absolutely anything they can drag into their nest, they certainly enjoyed a few mosquitoes I swatted.

Shooting was challenging in a new way. Of course there's not much light and I didn't feel like holding a flash in one hand, a camera in the other (yes, this is shot handheld)while balancing over an anthill so I just cranked up the iso a bit and did my best.
No, the challenging is following a specific and and focussing on it. There's a certain effect that shoals of fish and some herd animals like zebras used to confuse predators and it was having the same effect on me, confusing!

I think I shot 30-40 pics and got three that I liked, two of which went on flickr. You can see the other here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_wijnands/5884976407/

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