Airborne parasites

Paying a price for not applying insect repellant..
I normally spray my 100-deet insect repellent on my bug-hunts.
A couple of days ago, I paid the ultimate price when a swarm of hungry mosquitoes had bitten my arms and legs.
Their presence was overwhelming as I swatted a few in a single swipe.

An Aedes mosquito at work

Predator and prey
The Aedes mosquito is responsible for the Dengue fever which is a cause of many deaths in urban areas.
All you need, is transmission via an infected individual to cause an outbreak.
This time round, I was the prey.
I spotted a small mosquito on my arm and started photographing it.
Slowly, it began to fill up its belly with my blood.
Mosquitoes are expert in withdrawing its victim's bodily fluid without causing any pain.
I can see clearly on my viewfinder, the proboscis being injected into my skin.
With a contracting movement, blood started to fill its belly.

A large male mosquito

 Beyond normal magnification..
The mosquito is a small bug.
It measures no more than 5mm in length.
To get the best of it, you have to shoot the bug at 3x magnification.
Flash Exposure Control is set at +1 EV to increase the bombardment of the twin lights on my Canon MT24EX flash.
The hardest thing to do, is to get a steady shot handheld.
With my eyes peeled on the bug, I squeezed the shutter button when it came in focus. The rest was post-processing on my Adobe Lightroom 4 software.

The Jolly Telamonia

That yellow spider...

Telamonia festiva or the Jolly Telamonia can be found in most wooded areas around the Peninsular.
Its a specie of jumping spiders and is also one of the colourful around.
In short, I never get tired of capturing the Telamonia on my camera.

Side profile full body shot

 Getting the most out of your equipment..
I have plenty of praise for Canon's MPE-65 macro lens.
With this, you are able to go as high as 5x in magnification.
The extreme magnification allows you to capture the spider in its full glory.
For an arachnid measuring no more than 8mm in length, you would need a lot of magnification to bring it to life on an image.
The typical set up is 1x - 1.5x in full body shot.

The higher the magnification, the harder..
Not many people can work with 4x magnification and above while shooting their subjects handheld.
One of them is master photographer Kurtis Guek.
He is one of the very few skilled macro masters who spend a great deal of time capturing spiders as well as other insects up close.
You can view Kurt's blog and his excellent advise on macro photography.
With the Telamonia constantly on the move, you would need a pair of steady hands, knowledge on full flash settings and a good diffusion technique to capture the spider.
I learned a great deal from Guek on how to control the MT24EX flash.
On 4x magnification, the challenge was to get the Telamonia in focus and at the same time, fire the correct amount of light to illuminate its eyes.
Once the focussing is in place, the finger on the trigger just reacted.
Most of the time, its a 70/30 gamble to get a sharp image.
As the MPE-65 is a full manual lens with a very narrow band, you have little room for error to produce your image.
I set the Camera's FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation) to +1.5 stops. 
On the Adobe Lightroom 4.2 post-processing software, I am able to correct the exposure to get my desired effect.
As it is, I am very happy with the results.

Gallery

 

 

The Single-striped Grass Spider

Meet Perenethis Unifasciata
The Single-striped Grass Spider is a common arachnid.
You would usually find it living on grass and leaves and this time of the year, its out in full force at Gasing Hill.
I am a big fan of predatory spiders that are non-web weavers, so, the Perenethis Unifasciata  would fit in my books nicely.
In my past visits to Gasing Hill, I've recorded a few of this spiders.
I often mistook it for a Wolf-spider which is much smaller and usually crawls on the ground.

The Single-striped grass spider as you would see it on a normal scale

Its not hard to locate the grass-spider which is roughly about 12mm in length.
All I did, was pick it up and set it on 1x magnification to get a good shot.
By right, I should have used a short macro lens like the 50mm F2.5 macro to capture a full-body shot and slowly work my way to the extreme close-ups.

A fine specimen

Working on capturing the details..

With a cooperative spider that stood still while I was snapping away, I was happy to land a set.
And the details were amazing.
It don't take much effort to work on a 2.5 - 3x magnification to bring out the character of the grass-spider.
The Gasing Hill is also home to larger predatory spiders like the yellow-gold and the magnificent Golden Huntsman. 
I hope to do some follow-up trip to this recreational forest to capture the spiders for my record.

Gallery

 

The Sac Spider

First encounter
The Ramadan month is a period where its usually quiet at the state forest parks.
I took advantage of this to utilise my time to capture some macro shots with my new rig on a Canon EOS 5DmkIII.
For starters, shooting full-frame is simply amazing.
Now, having walked up and down on a 2km trail, I found a couple of subjects to capture. 
Nothing really interesting until I came face to face with an ant.
Underneath it, the bug was being gripped by the jaws of a Sac spider.
This was my first encounter with the species and after making reference with a field guide, its confirmed.

Looks can be deceiving: the ant paralyzed by the spider's venom

A slow death 
The Sac spider is an ambush predator and it kills by injecting a lethal venom on its prey.
Slowly, the spider's digestive enzyme will slowly turn its victim's internal organs and flesh into a goo soup where its consumed by the spider.
I didn't notice the Sac Spider until I turned the fern leaf that it was under up-side down.
The creature was so still, I managed to change the flash power output to capture some shots under 3:1 and 4:1 magnification.
For this, the Canon MPE-65 is the only lens capable of landing such shots.
Thanks to the guidance of Macro Master Kurtis Guek, who is also an amateur entomologist, I was able use the settings correctly with great results.
Its not easy to maintain focus on a spider that measures about 10mm.
And under high magnification, the flash exposure compensation has to be set to two stops over.

Face to face with a deadly micro predator: the Sac Spider

The details
Using controlled lighting with the right amount of diffusion, I was able to capture the Sac Spider.
And since it has a rather dull and dark coloured exoskeleton, I was glad that the image had turned out allright.
With some minor tweaks on my Adobe Lightroom 4 photo finishing software, I was able to bring out the details and I am pretty happy with the end-results.

Tales of the Blue Tiger Beetle

It came out of nowhere..
I first captured a Blue Tiger Beetle on camera three years ago.
At the time, I was using a 50mm F2.5 compact macro lens.
The closest I could go, was a cropped shot of the magnificent beetle which is easily spoofed.
You can't even get close to this bug as its pretty skittish.
Following the first encounter, I made two more captures. Most of the shots were not even clear.
Today, while trampling the Sg Tua Forest Park, I came across a few Blue Tiger Beetles.
Most were too skittish to capture.
One in particular, actually stood still.
I pressed my camera's shutter button and as the flash fired - three shots were recorded.
Later, after a review, only two shots were acceptable.

Tiger beetles are predatory insects. 
But from time-to-time, they too get eaten up.
My last capture was a dead beetle which was eaten up by a crab spider.

Mr Yellow..

Lynx spiders are fascinating creatures.
They make fantastic insect macro photography subjects and I don't have to travel far to find them.
Just outside my house, there is a Jasmine tree planted by my wife.
And on the leaves, I can find some small Lynx spiders (measuring about 4mm) prowling for its prey.
The spiders keep its domain free from pests and also guards the Jasmine tree from being gobbled up by destructive bugs.
Here's set I took recently at Gasing Hill...

Macromania Returns..

Inspired by Santi..
My Thai bro Santi Senarat has been working hard with his camera.
I saw some of his pix today and seeing the weather is hot, after bathing the dogs, doing laundry, I got inspired...


Back to the usual hunting ground..
I knew that I can't go wrong at Gasing Hill in Section 5, Petaling Jaya.
Since its smack in the mid-afternoon, the place isn't crowded. Its also pretty cooling underneath the jungle canopy.
I don't know if I still have what it takes to use the Canon MPE-65 macro lens.
This baby can really get you some awesome close-ups! 
I mean, at a 5:1 magnification ratio, anything that is smaller than 10mm in length is dead centre in the viewfinder...

On location.. 

A different landscape.. 
Gasing Hill is even more beautiful now.
Some folks had landscaped the entrance.
You get flowers growing as well as introduced ornamental plants and edible herbs.
My first subject was a Lynx spider.
This was a good sign.
I must admit that I don't have a high expectation of today's outcome in the trail.
And as usual, I packed my EF-50mm F2.5 macro lens together with the 100mm F2.8L and MPE-65 lenses for this exercise.
For the full flash photography, I used my trusty MT-24EX and MT-14 Ring flash.
These are my most reliable source of controlled flash devices.


Lost and found
It didn't take long for me to locate some fine specimens.
And I am happy to report that the spider population in Gasing Hill is healthy.
I was not disappointed with my find along the trail. 
There were some really good shots especially a close-up of the Salticidae or Jumping Spiders.
I also managed to snap a juvenile Tiger Beetle along the way.
With the shots working, I am rigging up for a night macro session at Gasing.. Yep, no more buying bicycles, its Macromania and its back! 


Samo's Macromania Gallery

A juvenile jumper

Another fine specimen: a Salticidae

Close-up shot

The juvenile, taken at 3:1 magnification..