The Eyes Have It

Why am I taking pictures of bugs? Sometimes a photo outing is a scavenger hunt. I know a certain species exists in my area—the field guide says so—and I want to find a member and prove that I did with a picture. Often, though, I will chase after another white peacock [my favorite butterfly, even though they are quite common in Florida] or a monarch [my least favorite], hoping for a better shot of the eyes. Insects might be ambulatory vegetables, allowing purely instinctual impulses to influence their behavior, wind-up toys running until their springs loosen. But when I capture their eyes in just the right light, I can give them impish or serious personalities that make them look like great [or at least cunning] thinkers.

And more than we realize might be happening in their little heads. I'm currently reading Life in the Undergrowth; its author, the naturalist Sir David Attenborough, points out that scientists have long considered insects "automata, mindless robots reacting automatically to the simplest stimuli," that crediting them with any of our human motives was thought "unjustified and scientifically disreputable anthropomorphism." Recently, however, scientists have begun to revise that attitude. In an experiment recounted in An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect, swallowtail butterflies learned to revise instinctual behavior to survive. Lantana, a common nectar source, "signals" butterflies, one of its pollinators, with color: a yellow bloom likely holds nectar while an older, red bloom does not. When scientists drained the fresh yellow blooms and filled by hand the red blooms, the swallowtails didn't starve to death as they would if they were simple "machines" obeying pre-programmed commands. Instead, they overrode their instinct, tried the red blooms, and were rewarded with food. They had learned that their instinctual preference for yellow wasn't feeding them and found a solution for their hungry bellies in the red.

When I look at field guides, the pictures often capture butterflies, for example, from behind, like this:


I can study the wing patterns and figure out a species identification, but I get no insight into the insect's attitude. To me, this kind of photo is equivalent to knowing a stranger as he drives by in a limousine with tinted windows. Oh sure, he might be a big-deal movie or rock star, but even though I saw the limo pass, I have no personal knowledge of the man inside, as I would get at a superficial, shake-hands-and-gush backstage meeting.

That's why I prefer a head-on shot, one that lets the little bug stare right back at the lens, giving me a little attitude.


Sparkle in the eyes is also important. My newest lens, a 300 mm, allows me to sit six or seven feet away from the subject. This distance provides enough cushion between us that the creature won't try to scurry away or hide. I can relax and take several pictures as my subject goes about its life. With luck, I'll catch the wet or shiny part of the eye at just the right moment, humanizing the little guy.



A butterfly or lizard on the computer screen is huge; in real life, many of my subjects are the size of a quarter or the first two digits of a finger, their little eyes difficult to catch. A slight shift of the lens or the subject [I breathe; the wind blows; the subject spies food or a predator] and the point of clear focus will become a shoulder or front leg, not the all-important face. For me, a successful picture is the capture of an intelligent eye staring right back at me.



In real life, the subject cannot hold its gaze with the same unwavering intensity of a photo, but engaging my eyes with its own gives the subject an upfront honesty that intimates an intelligence that I enjoy experiencing.

Little World, no. 1

When I was an invincible teenager, I used to walk barefoot around the neighborhood lake. One time I stepped on a rusty fishhook someone had carelessly discarded. Sometimes a foot landed in dog poop or on a mound of fire ants. And on one occasion, while strolling through a patch of clover, I got stung by a bee.

My neighbors consider clover a weed, although it is possible to buy seeds online and plant them as ground cover. I understand why people pull this plant from their lawns. The leaves are nondescript, and the flowers, viewed from eyes five or six feet off the ground, are nothing special: yellowish white puffballs that brown with age, colors reminiscent of used cigarette butts.

The first time I tried my newest camera lens, a 300 mm, I was shooting anything that caught my eye, not at all attempting to make "art." I took several shots of the puffball flowers in a clover patch. After dumping these images into the computer and viewing them, I was mightily impressed with the intricate petals that fell away from the centers, row by row.

I noticed also that a patch of clover, so inconsequential to me, was a tiny world full of activity. Bees, for example, visited flower after flower collecting nectar and pollen, like migrant workers harvesting fruit in strange groves.

I can't count the times I have stomped through clover—now with feet safe in shoes—while walking the dogs. I don't know how many tiny creatures I have crushed underfoot after Yo-Yo or Bug has dragged me off the sidewalk to one more interesting spot to sniff.

I do know that if I sit quietly by a patch, I will soon notice movement as this little nectar oasis teems with tiny life. I can take a vacation from my giant world to visit a different country, one without UN representation. I get to experience a culture that I don't understand, its citizens speaking and behaving in ways I can't translate with accuracy.

I have friends who are constantly traveling: Germany for spring break, Miami for a conference, New York City for technical training. Part of me feels that I miss something by not leaving home more. And yet when I am visiting a little world underfoot, I do vacation from my everyday life and sample a new culture. Plus I have the travel pictures to prove it!