Me and My Mantis

"From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
glimpse the grin, green metal mug
at masks the pseudo-saintly bug,
Orthopterous, also carnivorous,
And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us."
~Ogden Nash.

 Looks like a little lady we photographed back in September of last year is gaining a bit of popularity, we sold out of prints of her at a show in December and the shots have one a few awards on some photography competition sites. Funny thing is I'm not a fan of selling prints or entering competitions, guess I might have to look into it more.

The little lady I'm referring to is an adult female Chinese Mantis (Tenodera sinensis) , I was heading out to my truck to leave and do some errands, I opened the door to climb in and I felt something hit my arm.
She landed on me and crawled around for quite a bit, she was completely fascinated with crawling all over me....up the arm, onto the neck, around to my back and on to the top of my head. I gently escorted her to the tailgate of my truck then ran inside to and grab my gear.

She waited for my return in the same spot I left her, she headed towards me again to climb aboard. I moved her to a few spots to capture some shots, first shots were her on my truck, she immediately re-gained interest in me, the camera or her reflection in the lens...she proceeded to examine the scene by crawling on every bit of my gear. Fearing she would lose interest I moved her to a set of white plastic milk crate stacking/organizers I had sitting out side my garage (reason for the white studio look). 

Even after I moved her to the top of the crates she waited around for me to set the shot up, when I started making some photos she figured is was a good time to groom herself...not sure if she was cleaning her mandibles or her toes. Maybe she had a big meal and was picking out some of the lovely bug bits from her mouth, mantises are a voracious and beneficial predator in the insect world.

We get quite a bit of them here at the studio, I watched a female eat a large group of hornets right out of a nest in a short amount of time...snagged them right out one by one and devoured every last one of them Mmm Mmm Mmm Crunchy! They also happen to be nature's little fashion models...they love to pose and check out cameras, this pertains to the adult females... adult males are a bit skittish and the young usually don't like to stick around for anything (in this area anyway).

Back to the gear and set-up.

I used my Nikon D4 with  Sigma APO Macro 180mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM lens.

For the most part I usually shoot most all my macro starting at aperture f/16 but because the mantis is quite lengthy I set to f/18 or f/22. You really need to play with your angles and perspective when capturing them.

For the most part they move pretty slow so 1/100 to 1/125sec shutter speed works well. ISO I had at 100. It was hand held for this as I was changing positions with her movements and the space was limited.

Nothing shows a mantis personality more than their big beautiful eyes so getting a nice catch light in the peepers is crucial for us with the Praying mantis or any insect really. Had the Nikon SB910 speedlight attached on camera with a Rogue FlashBender

You have a little something stuck to your mouth... no here, do you want me to get it?  Napkin Please! 1/100sec, f/22, ISO100, 180mm (Click photo to enlarge)

 Ready for the cuteness overload?

Kissy face!!! 1/100sec, f/18, ISO100, 180mm (Click photo to enlarge)

Same image as above, rotated and cropped to show detail. (Click photo to enlarge)

Probably one of my favorite insects to photograph and just a big fan of them in general. I guess if I had a spirit or totem animal I would hope it was the mantis...looking back my very first encounter with a praying mantis as a young child it was a similar experience. Walking near my home and suddenly had one land smack in the middle of my chest and staring right at me inches from face...I remember the racing of my heart from the sudden surprise but almost as fast as the shocking large bug encounter happened the curiosity and respect was created by meeting such a beautiful creature or maybe it was just the big puppy dog eyes looking up at me ;)

Little girl hanging on the flashbender while I try to get some shots with the mobile. (Don't click, not a good pic of me)

We were able to grab some behind the scene video as well :)

You can see our praying mantis photos and more macro work here

 

If the Praying Mantis is your Animal Totem:

You have learned to take your time and live your life at your silent pace. You never make any movement without careful thought or contemplation. You know exactly where you are going and when you will get there. Even within this calm and serene environment you are capable of quick and decisive action when opportunity presents itself.

If Praying Mantis has crawled into your space;

Usually the Praying Mantis makes an appearance when we’ve flooded our lives with so much business, activity, or chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us. Taking a step back and some simple meditation would be in order here because the external din we’ve created needs to be quieted so that we can come back to our own truth. The Praying Mantis always comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives.

New at the Studio: Savage Universal Macro Art Adjustable Dual Arm LED Light

Well we wanted to call this (and some upcoming) blog post(s) "Equipment Review" or "Field Test" but we are sponsored by Savage Universal so it really would not be right to give a product review, Savage sends us some awesome gear and we wanted to share with you some of the cool things we get to use in and around the studio...so instead of "gear test" or "product review" we're just going to share some photos, our experiences and maybe some cool tips or tricks that might help you if are looking into the products.
       You might know Savage for their seamless paper backgrounds, backdrops, support stands and other studio equipment but recently they started promoting their Macro Art line up including extension tubes and the Dual Arm LED light we are featuring in our write up today.
Not going to lie...being sponsored is pretty cool and it's something we never thought would happen (more on that later in an upcoming post) so when packages show up it's like Christmas morning, we grab the boxes, run into the studio and immediately open the boxes to gaze on the gear with wide open eyes. After that we start thinking of all the different shoots and cool projects we will do with the gear. Most of the time we head right out and start shooting but it was later in the day so I decided to venture out first thing in the morning.
 It was no different when the LED light arrived but when you open the box you have gear that looks like it's gazing back at you, anything with a science fiction looking appearance is good in our book especially when it almost looks like one our favorite subjects to shoot in our spare time...insects.  I exaggerate a bit but the dual arms do resemble some bug antennae, these antennae...excuse me I mean arms are flexible articulated covered extensions which can be positioned in many ways for pinpointing lighting on your macro subject.  You can attach the light right to the hot shoe of your camera or secure it to a light stand or tripod via a cold shoe such as the enlight photo frio.
The easy to read control panel on the back has options for Flash or Continuous and each arm light can be operated separately, the lights at the end of the arms are surrounded by a cooling fin like casing.

The bug view

The other gear for the session.

 Camera Nikon D4

 Lens Sigma APO 180mm Macro f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM

 3 Legged Thing Frank tripod.

 The LED light arms measure about 23" so that was plenty of length to reach around the Sigma 180mm lens (w/hood).
We were able to go above, under and around the lens for multiple lighting angles and more importantly stayed in place. If shooting insects you might want to position the lights in the desired orientation first as with most articulated arms they make a squeaky sound when you bend them...which could startle your multi legged subject. Also because the arms are pretty long you might want to remove the light if you are picking up your gear to relocate, the arms could bounce up and down when walking and you don't want to have the light hit the front of your lens...those light casings are metal.
Here are some shots we took with the dual Arm LED light starting with the image of a wild carrot called Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota).

1/125sec, f/11, ISO1600

 Here are some thistle. Love the way we were able to aim these lights.

1/200sec, f/16, ISO140

1/200sec, f/16, ISO140

1/200sec, f/16, ISO140

The great thing about thistle is they attract butterflies, butterflies can be pretty skittish at least around here in the rural parts of New Jersey so it's best to focus on the flower and wait until they land while remaining quiet and still. We were lucky enough to have these Eastern Tiger Swallow Tails fluttering around the thistle all morning. We had one arm pointed underneath to get some light under the thistle as well as under the wings and the other arm coming down at a 45 degree angle to get some catch lights in the eyes.

Hi There!

awww, shy butterfly. ButterShy?

1/125sec, f/16, ISO400

Sharing the thistle with a bumble bee

Slurp!

Some insects I will actually approach without my gear and gently move in closer to see if they will "bug out", if they take off I pretty much know they won't stick around for me to set up my camera. Butterflies will usually return multiple times to the same flower so as mentioned before you just want to get set up, focus and wait. Don't try chasing butterflies from flower to flower it's near impossible to capture anything that way. I've actually watched photographers chase bugs when they switch flowers or fly away and the only thing you might get doing that is exercise, not that there is anything wrong with that but I enjoy relaxing behind the camera and sometimes with a tasty cool beverage while the bugs do all the work. We will have another post on photographing insects and even hummingbirds which explains in more detail on our set-up and method.
 That's pretty much it for our little write up, still testing the waters on blogging so I hope you at least enjoyed the photos. Again hoping it did not come across as a review, more shots soon when things settle down a bit here at the studio. More than likely we will bring it inside the studio to check it out during a product shoot or two.
For more on the Macro Art Dual Arm light or other Savage gear just head over to their site HERE.

Ring Around the Garden

A few years back photographic company enlight photo featured us in their blog after seeing some photos I took of an iris that blossomed in our neighbor’s garden using their orbis® ringflash. I really did not expect it lead to much but it began a great friendship with enlight photo, their CEO/inventor James Madelin and staff.

Honestly I was pretty excited as a few other photo companies at that time were blogging about us and featuring our work on their official sites as well as social media pages. 

our neighbor's iris

 You can check out the write up here 

Since then the orbis® flash system has been our “go to” modifier for a number of shooting scenarios…not just for floral photography but for macro insect photos as well as portrait jobs in our studio. You can check out the orbis® here as well as other snazzy gear they have. 

We’re reaching the tail end of spring here in the wonderful state of New Jersey but a lot of blooms have been hesitating around here, though we had a ton of iris pop up some of the more interesting flowers we have surrounding the studio are taking their sweet time due to some weather issues. Well we were not going to let that stop us…keeping a close eye the flowers that did decide to bloom and having our gear ready at different points of the day I ventured out a couple of times with an idea I had working on for a while that involved the orbis®  flash. I had been experimenting with different lighting techniques and angles for an image style I had used with some insect photography, basically dropping the camera’s ISO to 100, setting the aperture to f/16 (or higher) and a shutter speed of around 1/125sec or a bit faster, those settings combined with a flash can cause the background to “black out”.

Though this effect is nothing new getting the light to hit parts of the subject in a pleasant manner can be tricky for a number of reasons the main being the shape of the flower and its orientation…some flowers face up, some face down and others face every which way when following the sun.

Utilizing the shape of the orbis® I was able to create some interesting lighting, with flowers facing down or out to the side I used it in an “under light” position while flowers facing up I directed the flash from above or downward 45 degrees. The under lit proved to be my favorite because it gave the illusion the flowers were creating the light like mini street lamps.

For the actual equipment set up we attached the orbis to our Nikon SB-910 with the head rotated to the same direction of the ringflash (to keep flash controls accessible) and fired it with a set of PocketWizard PlusIII Transceivers and to keep everything tidy and usable with one hand (when needed) I implemented a dual flash bracket.

Under lighting set-up

Under lit result

Lighting from above

even shooting down on under lit tulip made for a neat shot

flower facing down, under lit

Under lit, the yellow of the flower becomes illuminated

Have you met my ant? Lighting above.

 Other gear for these shots include the Nikon D4, Sigma APO Macro 180mm f2.8 EX DG OS HSM lens and 3 Legged Thing Frank tripod.

Two more features on us from the gang at enlight

"Orb Spider orbis Macro Flash Shoot!"

"Interview: photographer Robert Lopshire"