Commission work

Published: 28th Aug 2011

Would you or your business like a high magnification photo of a specific subject?

I'd like to let readers know that I am happy to take on commission work, please email me with details of exactly what you would like (Use the 'contact me' link at the top of every page).

I was recently able to complete a commission job within four days of the original request!

The cost will vary depending on factors including the ease/difficulty of sourcing the appropriate subject and the time involved in shooting/processing the image(s).

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Some competitions, minor success!

Published: 1st Nov 2010
Updated: 2nd Mar 2011

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Recent site updates

Published: 9th Dec 2009

As mentioned in the previous post I've been giving the site a bit of a sort out, a major one actually. The front end HTML should appear very similar to before, although with a few tweaks, but the main change was an overhaul of the back-end code which generates the site. This was a major re-write so please do let me know if you notice anything odd!

The pages should all render as valid XHTML now so the site should work on most if not all browsers. I expect IE6 will do something odd with it but users of that browser should be used to odd behaviour!

The front end tweaks include:-

• RSS feed available on Blog
• RSS feed available on Articles (indexed on update time so you should re-receive notice of an article if I make an update.)
• New improved articles front page.
• Galleries default view is latest pictures from all subcategories, previously was 'my favourites' which wasn't often updated.
• New nicer looking (and XHTML valid) comments
• Comment preview facility
• Comment 'subject' now available
• More search engine friendly links, now /gallery/bugs/1 instead of site.php?category=19
• And a few more subtle changes as well!

I've also updated most of the articles so please take another look if you haven't viewed them in the last couple of days!

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Apologies for the lack of new stuff recently

Published: 2nd Aug 2009

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, moving house is a pain and it's taken me a few months to get everything sorted out to the point where I can start shooting seriously again!

Over the next couple of months I hope to fill out the focus stacking articles, and tweak the website design, and try to shoot some more decent bug stacks...

Incidentally I have just made a few small mods to the website as well as uploading a few recent images, so please let me know by email or use the commenting system if you spot anything I've mucked up!

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Diffusion

Published: 15th Apr 2009
Updated: 2nd Dec 2009

Diffusion is a tricky thing! I've been running some tests recently, since I encountered trouble with specular reflections shooting a Lacewing last week.

For a long time I've been using a kind of thin packing foam as diffusers. I originally got some wrapped round a new LCD monitor. This worked very nicely. Over a period of time I acquired various pieces of similar foam, and have been cutting all sorts of little flash diffusers from all these bits of foam, assuming they would all work as well...

Wrong! After someone else pointed out that foam doesn't diffuse as much as you might think, I started looking more closely at the different pieces of foam I was using. The original stuff which worked well is white to look at, you can not see through it, and it has a fairly fine 'grain'. The piece of foam I was using on the Lacewing had a very different structure. The 'bubbles' in the foam are much larger, and more transparent. Hence it was not diffusing the light as much as I wanted.

The next experiment was some paper. Kleenex tissue was advised but I was fearful of small bits of fluff coming off of tissue paper onto the specimen so my first tests were with a bit of standard printer/copier paper.

This diffuses extremely well. In fact, I think it diffuses too much!

Here's a comparison shot with some foam:

At full resolution there is slightly more detail visible in the hairy parts of the bee in the first shot (with the paper diffuser). However the consensus seems to be that the second shot looks better. The light is just too flat in the first image.

Of course some subjects require much more diffusion than others - for instance Beetles, particularly black Ground Beetles and Ladybirds. So I guess it's best to have a variety of diffusers available, and test diffusers on each subject before going through the whole stack!

One of these days I will get around to purchasing some proper diffusion material (e.g. from these people but I enjoy the hunt for junk that can be re-used!

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Recent Posts

• Commission work

Recent Photos

Full Blog History

• 2011
  • August
    • Commission work
• 2010
  • November
    • Some competitions, minor success!
• 2009
  • December
    • Recent site updates
  • August
    • Apologies for the lack of new stuff recently
  • April
    • Diffusion
  • March
    • Sunset Moth (Urania riphaeus)
  • February
    • What to shoot in the middle of winter?

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