Wonderful arthropods II

Narosa sp. caterpillar from Thailand

Here is another round of talented nature photographers with a liking for creatures with more than four legs.

The first one is Paul Bertner who calls himself a  Pengembara, a word in Malay which means a kind of traveler, adventurer, backpacker, vagabond- all the above. You can find more about him and his travels on his blog. I picked the caterpillar photo there as well but Paul also has a Flickr site.

This bald-faced hornet was photographed by Sean McCann from Vancouver. He is a biologist and amateur photographer. He writes on his website: I wrote my thesis on Red-throated Caracara foraging biology, having spent 5 seasons in French Guiana studying these fascinating birds. I have also studied social wasp defensive behavior and have worked on mosquito reproductive ecology. There are a lot of great images on his Flickr site as well.

When talking about insect photographers one should not forget one of the masters of the trade - Alex Wild. His macro photos are perhaps the best known and most widely distributed of all. His photographs appear in numerous natural history museums, magazines, books, television programs, and other media. Alex is a Texas-based entomologist who started photographing insects more than a decade ago. He shares his knowledge on the web and offers courses and workshops. As for the quality of his work, well, just have a look at the emerging Aedes aegypti I picked. 

Yudy Saw claims he is doing insect macro photography just as a hobby but my, these details are just amazing and he certainly has an eye for rare circumstances. Probably one of his most famous images showing  a mantis with a spider on its head was featured in the Telegraph. Yudy is from Banten, Indonesia and you can find a lot of his work on his 500px site. Below you can watch a slide show with some of his insect close ups.

Time to find some vertebrates for future posts - fish in particular, just for more balance.