December 27, 2011
The top “Cool Photo of the Week” for the year was an astounding macro photograph of a common dragonfly. Beaudoin wrote: “I like how the photographer chose the right time of day to capture a brilliant photo.”
Many photographers like to shoot macro (very close up) photographs of insects because the macro camera lens reveals details of alien-looking creatures that we can’t see with our own eyes. A Polish photographer named Miroslaw Swietek takes it even further. He goes into the forest in the early morning and photographs the insects when they are covered with dew. Through the camera lens, the drops of water make the insects look as though they are covered with diamonds.
This is a photograph of a dragonfly. Look at how the water drops magnify the lenses in its compound eyes! (click here to read another one of my posts if you want to understand how compound eyes work).
LiveScience interviewed Swietek about how he takes these amazing photographs, and he said that the time of day makes it easier. "That early in the morning, insects are very sleepy so the camera doesn’t disturb them."
If you would like to see more of these amazing images, click here to go to the LiveScience website, where they have a slideshow of Miroslaw Swietek’s "jeweled" insect photographs.
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Posted by: Seymour Simon
