I found this little creature deceased in my back yard. So, I thought I would give it it’s biggest moment on the world stage… :)
The image shows the detail of the wing joint (actually two wing joints but one is very damaged). This would be its right side. I really enjoy macro photography. I’ve described the process that was used to take this image. I like to shoot things that are part of every-day-life but that we seldom see. Great example here. I’ve seen thousands of Mud Daubers flying around our property but have never seen this level of detail.
This image was taken with my Canon Canon EOS 5D Mark III using my MP-E65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo set on 65 mm. In addition, I used 68mm of extension tubes to get a bigger magnification. The total magnification is about 8x. The camera was set on Manual mode with the aperture set at f/5.6, shutter speed at 1/4 at ISO 100. I took a total of 26 images and stacked it with Helicon Focus. This process is called focus stacking. The reason for this process is that this type of magnification yields a very, very narrow depth of field. You’ve probably seen this effect where some parts of an image are out of focus or blurry. This is why the front part of his wing and the parts beyond the joint are blurry. The focus stacking technique allows you to take multiple images with different focus points and merge them into one with software (e.g. Helicon Focus). This process is very complex (and expensive) so it’s not for the faint of heart… :)
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© 2015 Terry Kahler
