When I was in college (early 1970’s), I decided that I wanted to photograph spiders. (At that time I was collecting spiders and preserving them in isopropyl alcohol.) I went to a local camera shop and purchased my first (and only) SLR camera. It was a Praktika. I do not remember the model, but it did come with a bellows. I never did learn to take good pictures with it. (Most were out of focus.) In 2008, I sent for a Canon xTi (8mg pixel) kit. I started trying to take pictures. In 2009, I got the urge to start macro photography. (At that time it was just trying to take pictures of insects.) I worked with the standard telephoto zoom lens (up to 300) and also took a lot of pictures with the 18-35 Canon lens. Most of the pictures were OK, but just were not what was needed to enlarge the subject and still have the insect outline in focus. Things just weren’t working out. While near the swamp near our condo one day, I was thinking about the picture quality and I remembered reading the descriptions of the lenses that came in the kit. I remembered something about a lens that would take crisp pictures. I went home, looked through the paperwork again, and found the information. I had a 50mm lens. I put it on my camera and that is when things began to “click”. I was finally getting my subjects in focus and most were looking great on the laptop screen also. The more pictures I took, the more I realized that I was limited in my results. Small to tiny subjects just were not the quality I wanted when I enlarged the photo on the computer. I guess you could say that I was ready to take the next step in macro photography, which I will write about in my next blog.
Progress
The first week of my website has been one of many mistakes and days of frustration. The very helpful people at Namecheap have helped me get back into my site each time I have done something wrong and locked myself out from being able to even view the site a couple times. Thank you, Namecheap Techs. I also want to thank our friend and “bonus son”, Mike Hall, for being willing to help and now the website is now functioning the way that I had hoped it would. I have spent much time this week uploading cropped pictures to the ICBugs Gallery. I have about 30% of my Michigan pictures uploaded. I have plans to also have albums containing insects from Tennessee, Florida, Europe and Puerto Rico. It is my hope that anyone with knowledge will be willing to contact me with any identification corrections.
Thank you, Bill ICBugs Lucas,
Email: BillLucas@icbugs.net