Wonderful arthropods

After my rant yesterday, today on a much lighter note. The omnipresence of the internet might have its good and bad sides but one really good one is the fact that everybody has access to a myriad of wonderful images of live on our planet. The world is full of talented photographers that are able to capture the beauty of living things and nature itself. Not long ago I introduced you to Alexander Semonov and his beautiful images of marine life. Today I will add a few more names to the list.

The first is a colleague working as collections technician at our institute, Valérie Lévesque-Beaudin. Valérie is an entomologist with a passion for macro photography and of course most of her images show her favorite organisms - arthropods. I selected one photo (above) I particular like but have a look at her Flickr presence for a much larger selection.

Number two is Thomas Shahan, who was nicely introduced in an article by the Smithsonian magazine and on TV. Just look at the moth I grabbed from his Flickr site.

Number three used to work for BIO as well. His name is Jay Cossey and I had the pleasure to take him to an expedition to the Great Barrier Reef a number of years ago. His insect photo's are stunning and his work was recognized before, e.g. he did all 24 images for the first ever National Geographic Butterfly Calendar. I choose an image showing him in front of one of his photos. I believe this photo was taking for a university publication way back then.

The last of my 'photo heroes' today is Sam Harris who is a Graduate Student (Ph. D. in Biology) and Teaching/Research Assistant at the University of Tulsa. At least that's what his Flickr profile said where I found some awesome spider portraits.

There are of course many more talents out there and I promise to post more in the future. In case you know of any please let me know or add a link or a name in the comments.