Planning Ahead

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Studio starting to look a lot better!

Summer is half over andI have no idea where the first half went - but I have a feeling the second half is not going to go by any slower. So this probably the perfect time to start thinking about the rapidly approaching “off-season” for insect photography. If you, like me, want to plan for a productive winter in the studio, the time to do so is now. For the first time in many years I have had to come to grips with the reality of an honest to goodness winter season - and I am not talking about the kind of winter that I am used to - the kind that consists of a week or two of temperatures in the mid-fifties. In just a few more weeks I will be faced with some of the harshest winter weather that the North American continent can produce. The Midwest is well known for its long, cold, wet ,and windy winters, with heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures being absolute certainties.


Every year, in the early fall, I will devote a little time to talk about the changing seasons but it has always been with a sort of academic detachment - like I was describing the conditions one might expect to encounter during a visit to one of Jupiter’s smaller moons. This year I feel a slightly greater sense of urgency and have decided to tackle this question both earlier and more thoroughly than I have in the past. And with this in mind our preparations for the coming winter kick off this week with a two part livestream titled “Planning Ahead”.


In  Part I, on Tuesday July 23rd, I am going to lay the ground work for a series of more detailed and specific discussions that will deal with exactly how we can get the most out of the coming winter. In this first session I will talking mostly about the things we can do to  extend the insect photography season, though later on I will  be getting into several other macro disciplines that also require some careful planning. Here are a few of the specific issues I will discuss on Tuesday:

Setting realistic goals

Making a “Catch List”

Dry cleaning vs. wet cleaning

Pre-posing cleaned subjects

Dealing with eyes

The importance of maintaining an up to date “catch catalogue” and shooting schedule

Stocking up on supplies

Planning for bycatch

Dealing with soft bodies and the role of taxidermy

Storage for shipping vs. storage for shooting

Live storage

Never wet and never dry subjects

Avoiding stress

Chemical consequences

Purchased specimens and the difference between commercial drying and home drying

Size matters

Don’t forget the background

To Kroil or not to Kroil?


Sounds like a lot to cover? It is - but that is why I am starting this discussion earlier than I have done in past years. And most of these topics will covered separately and in more depth in future livestreams and video presentations. But for now, here is your invitation to the livestream… https://youtube.com/live/J3aulAGOWDI?feature=share


The first of these deeper dives  will be presented on Thursday when I get into to the very practical matter of pre-shoot temporary storage of posed and unposed specimens.



This is a subject I have not previously presented at such a granular level, but just exactly how do you store cleaned and posed insects for future photography? In this stream I will show you the storage methods that I personally use and I will also show you exactly how I make the storage vessels I prefer. Think of it as a mini-DIY tutorial  - easy to do and extremely helpful. Here is your invitation to the livestream… https://youtube.com/live/YDUkWV0kg0w?feature=share



If you are waiting for the recording from Saturday’s  Pzoom livestream, it is posted over on Patreon - and it was a good one! I have also posted a copy of the chat, which is packed with useful links and other cool information.


But if you are waiting for the release of the “Tangent - 3D modeling livestream”, it was released today and can be seen by following this YouTube link, or you can simply click the video link https://youtu.be/L2r4ziTplXo, and just watch it from here…


This is a non-Pzoom weekend coming up, but that means it is time for another “After Stack” post-production workshop and roundtable discussion with Bud Perrott and yours truly.

This week we are going to be taking a closer look at all the different ways that we can refine masks in Photoshop and other non-destructive phot-editors. If you have not come to one of these events in the last, this would be a great time to change that as this promises to be an extremely practical and helpful session for anyone doing their own macro photography editing (in other words, for everyone). Don’t miss it - Saturday morning at 10AM. This is a Zoom event so you will need a copy of the invitation to attend - and here it is -

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: After Stack with Bud Perrott and Allan Walls

Time: Jul 27, 2024 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=88626705185

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122


The July Macro Competition is wrapping up next week, so if you have not submitted your entry for the month you need to be thinking about getting that done before NEXT THURSDAY! The theme is “It Came from the Grocery Store” - a macro photograph of something you could find at the local grocery shop - shot at 1:2 or greater magnification. You can submit up to two images unless you have previously won this competition, in which case you may only submit a single entry. Harold Hall is my guest judge for this event and I am really looking forward to this one!


Lastly, I am trying to get a headcount for the upcoming “First Annual Midwest Macro Picnic and Livestream” - if you are interested in participating in a free, live, wide-angle macro workshop, somewhere in Illinois during the first or second weekend of September, you need to let me know how many people you are bringing and where you are coming from (so I can choose a venue that is maximally convenient for everyone). You can message me through the Walls App (https://www.walls-app.com) or the Patreon messaging system, but you need to do it right away - I have a lot of arrangements to make!

And the Winner Is...

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Hi everyone,

The July Competition

I just wanted to give you a quick update on the move and, while I’m in the neighborhood give you the results from the June competition (“Abstract”) and announce the theme and rules for this month’s  competition. Let me begin with the last point - this month your image would be described “It came from a Grocery Store”. Note that I don’t say which grocery store or when it was acquired or why you got it, simply that the macro photograph(s) that you submit are of an object, shot at 1:2 or greater magnification, that came from a grocery store.

The Rules

One rule that I planned to enforce this month and announced on my website was about former competition winners being allowed to submit only a  single image from this month going forward. But I messed up and did not change the wording in the rules on the competition page, so  cannot in all fairness enforce a rule that was posted properly - but it is now, or soon will be - former winners and ties get only one entry per month. It is the same for our multiple winners. Everyone else gets two entries - and no one gets 3, 4 ,or 5 entries, ever. So this month you will not be punished for submitting two entries, but in consideration of those winners who did follow the new rule, we will only accept your first submission - which sounds pretty reasonable to me. Something else I should explain is why this month there is no video. I have no equipment to record a video, not connection to upload it over, and no time to make the thing anyway. So this is a written version, and a short written version at that. And that leads me to the first point - an update on my move.

Moving one’s home, business, and studio is every bit as much fun as a vigorous frontal sinus lavage, and possibly more. Moving anytime is terrible, but moving in the heat of an Alabama July is just the worst and at the time of this writing I had not actually started the actual moving part yet! I was still packing. The move started the day after I wrote this and it took all of two days to complete - that is just the driving part. So for the week before and the week after this move I have remained hot and tired and simply have not been able to stop mislabeling boxes long enough to make  a video, let alone one that you might enjoy watching. So I decided to do the competition announcement this way, just this once. And it is not really me that did the heavy lifting to judge your entries! That accolade goes to next month’s guest Judge and all around good fellow, Harold Hall, who anticipated the tight spot this move would put me in and contacted me to offer his expert judging services to help me out in my time of need. And I accepted his offer. So this is a competition scored independently by both Harold and myself - allowing me to fulfill my promise to have two judges for future competitions. He did a spectacular job (because I agreed with his choices, in most part) and I should add that I am honored to have such a seasoned expert on the panel. As is my practice, I shared my scoring strategy with the guest judge, who scored each image using the same criteria. Then I fed his scores and mine into a Supercomputer  which struggled for less than four hours before tabulating the results into what you are about to read. As always the Honorable Mentions are not presented in any particular order, but the top ten most certainly are (in reverse order).

But before we jump into the results, a word on the topic.


ABSTRACT - relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colors, and textures


We had one DQ (5-images) and several entries that I had a hard time thinking of as abstract images. I was definitely looking for images that implied meaning using shapes colors, and textures. When I look at an abstract artwork, especially a photograph, and I recognize what I am looking at, I find that knowledge to be quite distracting. When I make an abstract picture I take pains to make sure you see the colors, features, patterns first. If you recognize the subject, I have not done what I was trying to do.With a successful abstract, the viewers eyes  are locked into the shapes, the colors, the reflections, shadows, and the textures. The viewer is encouraged to look beyond the subject to see the beauty in the components that make up the image. So with all that in mind, here are the results from the June competition as judged by Harold Hall and I:


Honorable mentions


Aljo Anthony for “Waves of Green”

George Simpkins for “Rebirth of the Serpent”

Tom Biegalski for “Rusty Rivers”

Julie Botts for “GlueStack #2”

Francesc Damleau for “Flow of Time”


Finalists


In 10th place - Pierre Soreau for “Sometimes Rust is Creative”

9th - Mike Olsen - “Stormy Weather Map”

8th - Amy Perlmutter - “Butterfly Scale Mandela”

7th - Norbert Balog - “Smoke”

6th - Mike Olsen - “Moth Wing”

5th - Hanspeter Steiner - “Some Transparency & Reflection”

4th - Alan Lyle - “Close Shave”



In 3rd place is George Simpkins with the “Galaxy of a bread Slice”




In at number 2 is Robert Storost with “Pseudo SEM”




And our winner for June 2024, with his outstanding image “Cellular Magnetism” is TOM BIEGALSKI!

Congratulations Tom, on a very successful showing in June. We both loved your winning photograph and agreed that it was the very essence of a great abstract work. And here is the winning image for June 2024:

Getting Settled - and an After Stack reminder

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Absolutely not. The move is progressing, and I made quite a bit of progress today, but I am not even close to having the studio ready to go. This is the state of the studio as late as yesterday...

 ... and this is AFTER 4 days of working on it. This going to be a major task and it is going to take quite a few more 12-hour days to get the basics in place. I hope you can bear with me a little while longer and I hope to have enough done by Tuesday to get next week off to a good start with an update livestream.

I have only been out to explore the area briefly and even took a couple of pictures this afternoon. These are from a park very near the house.

Polistes wasp in flight

 A Polistes species I am not familiar with, and an ant busy farming his flock of aphids...

 ... on the underside of a milkweed.

I hope to have many more examples of the prevalent local fauna to show you as I get time to explore further afield.

But my priority this evening is telling you about tomorrow's AfterStack, with Bud Perrott and your's truly. If you didn't make it to the first episode, AfterStack is a post-production workshop/roundtable discussion for macro photographers. It is not a lecture or a tutorial video, it is a place to come to ask questions, or to show off your way of processing your images. Bring your problem pictures to get help polishing it, or bring your greatest achievements and show us how you did it. This is an hour and a half for you to learn, teach, talk, and share ideas about macro post-production. Your questions will always be our first priority.


 To join the discussion, you will need an invitation, so here it is...


Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ AfterStack with Bud Perrott

Time: Jul 13, 2024 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=83422770643

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

FINALLY... a tip for my bird photography friends... if you ever see this expression on the face of a mockingbird who is watching you photograph her nest...

moments before the attack

 ... you need to leave the area immediately. I did not, and was attacked repeatedly, at a public rest area by the side of the freeway in Tennessee - most embarrassing.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Allan

The Agony of Moving

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Did I say “Agony”? Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but moving has to be one of my least favorite things to do, ever. Moving into a similar sized space, or a little larger, has its benefits. With more room can get more organized, for example. But I am moving into a smaller space, and that is a very different matter. It requires that I not move everything, which is the same as having to choose which chunks of my life am I prepared to amputate so that the rest will fit. That is what I am doing this week, so that when the trucks arrive in a couple of days I will have everything I need separated from everything I will not have room for. And this is the part I have the hardest time with. It is when I discover the sentimental value of things I have been dragging around for decades. You can’t really feel that until you have to leave it behind.

But I should be looking on the bright side, shouldn’t I? This move will be a chance to renew and revitalise the channel, to take advantage new surroundings and new people to provide a rich source of content, and to become more efficient with my insect photography because bug season is getting ready to shrink dramatically (fewer outings, but a renewed sense of urgency to get results). Change is always hard, and a big change like this will be harder than most, but it is the right move at the right time, so it will all work out. Please hang in there with me while I get the hardest part, the physical move, completed. I am not certain how long it will take me to rebuild my photography studio, the video set, and my back office, but I will be working like a madman to get everything set up and operational so that I can get myself back into a production routine as quickly as possible. I appreciate your understanding!

Some announcements…

The theme for the July competition is “It Came from the Grocery Store” - and the rules are as follows:

1) Anything you found, or could have found, at a grocery store (in the US sense of the word - but supermarket would work as well) which is where you go to buy stuff like food and the everyday consumables of life. An eggplant, a magazine, or a roll of sticky tape are all good examples of the things you could find there. A Boeing 767, a collapsible yurt, and a chunk of moon rock are not.

2) Your picture needs to be a MACRO photograph, which I am defining as 1:2 or greater (half life size. This is more magnification that I have used previously so be aware of the change).

3) You may submit one or two entries, unless you have won the AWP competition in the past. Former winners (first place and ties) may only submit one image to this competition in July.

4) The Official Guest Judge for July is Mr. Harold Hall, a seasoned and experienced photography judge and judge educator. Your images will be in good hands!

5) That’s all - have fun and get creative!

When a bad shot becomes a happy accident - artifact or mist?

I have to get back to packing, but I am planning to take some time this evening to publish the results of the July competition - Please be patient just a little longer!

As soon as I land in my new place and find out where the wall sockets are, I will let you know and start getting everything back on track. There will be no livestream on Thursday of this week and Tuesday of next, but I may be able to get one out on Thursday - a week from Tomorrow. I am going to have to cancel this week’s planned Pzoom and I will otherwise keep the schedule as it has been for the last couple of years - so the next Pzoom will be on July 20th which will also be the next Tangent, with Larry Strunk. The next After-Stack will be next weekend, on Saturday the 13th of July, with Bud Perrott.

I hope that covers everything for now, but I do have one last thing I will put out there… If you have thought about supporting the channel in the past but have never got around to it, or if you are feeling the urge to do so now, this would be a fantastic time to make a small donation to the “Gas for two 26’ moving trucks” fundraiser that I just invented. This move has been a lot more expensive than I had expected and your help, if you can manage it, would be hugely appreciated. If you feel so inclined, just click here to be redirected to the place where that can be done! THANK YOU!

Opportunity

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So, the theme for this week’s brace of livestreams is “Opportunity”.

I came up with this idea over the weekend, when I was trying to juggle an overly optimistic production schedule with my yearning to be outside in the sun and sea breeze with a camera in hand. I kept trying different ways to organize the schedule that would leave a gap for some “shutter time” - not to be confused with the also pleasurable going out to shoot stills or video for work. B+No, all I wanted was time to walk around outside, preferably in an unfamiliar corner, to see what I might find. But I kept coming up with the same bottom line - there was no free time that would give me the opportunity to get outside.

But it was that thought that stuck with me, and as I worked through the day’s fixed obligations, a morning Pzoom meeting followed by, what turned out to be, an incredibly helpful Tangent show - something about waiting for “Opportunity” to “give me” the time to do what I wanted to do. Who is this “Opportunity” and why is my day at the mercy of his or her temperament in judging whether or not I should be allowed to go outside. It struck me that I actually spend quite a lot of my time patiently waiting for “Opportunity” to give me permission to take care of myself.

green on green

What if “Opportunity” was less like a demanding taskmaster and a little more like a useful tool - something I could take down from the shelf when I needed to, and use in the way that benefits me and, by extension, the people who find something of value in my work? In other words, why couldn’t I take opportunity instead of waiting for it to be given, and if it wasn’t close by, why couldn’t I just make some of my own?

And that is what I want to talk about this week… how less than 60 minute, taken selfishly from my weekend schedule turned out, the benefits it bestowed and how that hour impacted the remainder of the weekend. Understand that I have been wanting to get out into the swamps to search for the ridiculously hard to find (around here, at least) - Sesbania herbacea, AKA, swamp Sesbania, hemp Sesbania, coffeeweed, and many others. It is a wild legume in the same family as the pea, Fabaceae, and it is native to the southern and southwestern US. One of its most recognizable features is its foliage, long stems with paired lance-shaped opposing leaflets, which is pretty unmistakable and shown here. My interest in this plant is actually more of a fascination with a tiny species of beetle, a member of the Curculionidae, that is born, lives, and dies in and around this species, and only this species of shrub.

Eudigogus pulcher - “The Most Beautiful”

I am talking about the breathtakingly gorgeous Sesbania clown weevil, and insect that has become a regular part of my summer since moving down here. As the likelihood of my leaving this area in the not too distant future increases, the thought of leaving behind this, and a few other species is a source of some sadness. Eudiagogus puncher, whose scientific name was taken from the Latin could be literally translated as “the most beautiful” could not have been given a more apt moniker. It is, up close, and personal stunning creature to behold. With its gentle rounded curves, floppy, drooping antennae and large clumsy looking weevil-feet already in place, all it needed was some eye-catching ornamentation. And this it has in abundance!

The clown weevil is, like many beetles  in the Curculionidae, covered in scales. The majority of them a re small oval and almost translucent, but appear black because of the dark layer of chitin to which the scales are fixed. But covering the beetle from head to tail and even extending down the appendages, is a regular reticulated  series of broad bands of glittering, multicolored gemstone-like scales that are difficult to describe adequately. When the insects emerge from the soil where they have lived as larvae for most of their lives, and first climb the stem of the plant that is to be their home, the scales are predominantly red with a scattering of orange, yellow, green and blue scales. But as they age, the colors become more variegated with the reds diminishing markedly and the blues and greens becoming more dominant. But to the naked eye, these unassuming little beasts are drab, dark beetles of only a few millimeters in length, probably not earning them a second glance. When the sun catches them from just the right angle, though, they sparkle like the precious gem they are. I could go on but will spare you - a picture will do a better job than I could. Looking at the scales under magnification they take on the character of some exotic kind of opal, with shimmering internal facets underlying a smooth translucent surface. The color is not a result of pigment within the scales, but instead a manifestation of refraction of the light bouncing off the hundreds of tiny photonic discs that make up the internal structure of the scale.

One interesting observation I made when first introduced to this species was that the weevils completely lose their color when damp, becoming uniform black even under high power magnification. Dying the weevil will have little effect until most of the water has evaporated, at which time the scales begin to light up, one at a time, in a most remarkable display of color. It looks exactly as if the animal was covered in thousands of microscopic LEDs in every color pf the rainbow, that are being switched to full power, one by one. This is something that you should not miss witnessing for yourself. If you live in a region known to be home to this plant, you should find it and then narrow your search to plants with leaves that are covered in small round holes - find the holes and you have found the weevils, but your task is not done. Catching them is a challenge. They are experts at hiding themselves. But they have an Achille’s heel, that by coincidence is also  part of the foot. When they see us coming they immediately put the plant stem between them and us. This maneuver keeps them almost completely out of sight, but for their big furry feet which can be spotted easily with practice, gripping the opposite side of the stem. The only other times I have been able to find them is as they sleep, when they can be found inside the leaves of the Sesbania, which close at sunset to leave a convenient sleeping place for the weevils, and when they mate. And they mate A LOT. It is not uncommon to find a row of three or four interlocked weevils, with the most recent participant piling onto the back of the rearmost, and probably confused of the frustrated suitors. Other than eating Sesbania, this frenzied coupling appears to be their sole waking activity.

You have to watch the stream to know what this ugly thin is!

And that is why I wanted some time off during the sunny part of the day on Saturday. I needed to find a new habitat in which to locate these insects. The only place I had ever seen them was in a single large Sesbania plant, the size of a small tree, located on a bus highway half an hour north of my home and that is where I planed to start my search.

If you want to know what happened, what it has to do with dragonflies and how close I came to mossing out on all of it, then join me this evening at 8PM central time for Macro Talk, and I will tell you. You may also want to drop by on Thursday afternoon at 2PM for Macro Talk Too, where we will be celebrating our 100th Macro Talk Too (our 200th show!) and talking about the weird idea of making a life of macro photography. Should be a lot of fun.

There is not Pzoom this Saturday, but you aren’t getting off the hook that easily - this weekend is our first episode of AFTER-STACK - a post-production, free workshop for macro photographers that Bud Perrott and I have been thinking and talking about for a long time. It is very much a discussion, not a lecture, and we want you to come by, ask any questions you have, or show us when there is a better way to do something. Bud is one of the most accomplished post=production experts that I know and his work in macro has been amazing. But he and I take some pretty different approaches to the same problem and it makes for some interesting discussion. 

To learn more, there is a place over on Discord, on my server, where you can go to talk about anything related to the new AFTER-STACK show. This would also be a great place to drop off any images you want help with or have questions about - get them in soon - we will be  taking images form Patreon members first. Patreon supporters will also have access to Bud and I through the Discord Patreon VIP lounge - more gapped reasons to consider joining the gang. If you want to learn more about Patreon, come over to www.Patreon.com/allanwallsphotography and we will tell you everything you need to know. Here is your link - you need this to get in on Saturday!

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AFTER-STACK macro editing workshop

Time: Jun 29, 2024 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=81590617707

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Also tonight, big announcements about a couple of coming attractions scheduled for the very near future.

A word to the wise… if you are thinking of adding a copy of Lester lefkowitz’s “Closeup and Macro Photography” to your library (which is a very good idea because it is a very good book), then you might want to act fast. Since first mentioning that I was reading these two volumes and that I was as impressed as could be, they have been disappearing from Amazon’s shelves at a steady rate. I am into the second volume and my enthusiasm grows with every chapter, so in the run up to my conversations with Lester I will probably talk more and more about what I am seeing and the remaining stock will continue to dwindle. Lester printed a very limited run of these volumes and  I doubt that what Amazon still has will cover the demand - just saying. Oh, and if you live in one of those places that Amazon will not visit (examples include, Jupiter -all zip codes, undersea thermal vents, active volcanos, the Van Allen belt, and Norway), Lester has directed you to Bay where he will sell you the book and get it shipped, or teleported to you. For everyone else, just use this Amazon Affiliate link (your doing so may earn me a small commission because that’s what an affiliate link is)

https://amzn.to/4bztPPX for Volume 1 and https://amzn.to/45CJCMr for Volume 2