Buggin with Bridgey is a Monthly report of sightings from the Let’s Go Buggin Photography Tour in the Cairns Botanic Gardens.  As the months roll by, subtle changes in the seasons bring sightings of new creatures and this report aims to give people a wrap up of the current animals seen as well as provide an ongoing citizen science account of our wonderful critters that can be seen in the tropical north of Queensland.

Creating Disco Bugs

November was a bit of a change in routine for Aussie Macro Photos.  I paused the Let’s Go Buggin Tours in Cairns to focus on my Disco Bugs Exhibition in Sydney as part of the Head On Photo Festival. So I thought It was probably appropriate to have my blog focus on creating Disco Bugs this month.

Media around the event started to ramp up in October with The Weekend Australian approaching me for an interview in their Heart of the Nation feature.  You can see an online version here.

Creating Disco Bugs was born out of the urge to come up with an artistic style that I could call my own.   I wanted to take my photography to another level and do something unique and stylistic that could also be commercial.  I had a vague idea of the aesthetic I wanted to create, but I knew that I wanted to incorporate some interesting colours.   It wasn’t until I started to experiment with a variety of lighting techniques and backgrounds that my artistic direction was conceived.

One day, this tiny juvenile Giant Rainforest Mantis (Hierodula majuscula), only 15mm, took up residence in my yard on the grass that was left to grow almost a metre tall.  Once I spotted the adorable creature,  I thought it was a brilliant opportunity to fine-tune the techniques and tools that I was using to create the visual concept I was pursuing.

In fact, this image was the exact micro-second that I realised the artistic vision.  The Mantis posed perfectly on the right part of the flower, at the right distance from my camera and the background to create the bokeh, the sun was at the right colour temperature and I had my camera settings and flash at the appropriate levels.   All the many individual elements came together at the right time and this was the result.  You could say I had a visual epiphany!

 ‘Champagne Mantis’ is available for made-to-order prints and as part of my Greeting Card Collection.

Actually, it took four hours over two days with this mantis to formulate the exact combination of elements required to create this look.  Truth be told, I fell in love with this tiny creature over those two days.  It was just the most fantastic model you have ever seen!  I would put my finger in front of it, and it would voluntarily walk on top like a pet parrot…and I would then move it onto a flower and it looked at the camera.  Once I was done with that flower, I would raise my finger, and again, like a well-trained pet, it moved back onto my finger and allowed me to reposition it on another flower…it was the most endearing experience! It showed no sign of being disturbed, so I continued the photoshoot trying to get that perfect shot with different lights and distances between my camera, the mantis and the background.   I literally have hundreds of photos of this individual while I was perfecting the settings and combinations to get this look.  Once I formulated the technique for the Disco Bugs aesthetic…I put this individual back on the grasses where I found it, and thanked it for being instrumental in creating Disco Bugs.

Now that I had the winning formula to create this look I just needed to find the models suitable to participate in the photoshoots.  Luckily I had a flatmate who didn’t mow the lawn very often, and our backyard was pretty much constantly overgrown… but hey, it attracted a lot of insect and spider life!

These images were all of creatures living in the overgrown grasses of the backyard.

 ‘Green Caterpillar’, ‘Pink Ladybird’ and ‘Blue Grasshopper’ are all available as part of my Greeting Card Collection.