One week left for the wicker man entries to be completed and returned. This is the first of a series of films about the 2011 project.

visit http://wickermanoxford.co.uk/ for more information

This is my first attempt to embed a video on the blog. Stops it being stills only. These are two daffodil buds from my garden, filmed in time lapse using a Nikon D1x over a period of four days. Grow lights are used to fool the flowers into thinking they are growing in daylight. For some plants, the day-night cycle is very important. Luckily Narcissi will flower well under artificial light. Bowens flash were used to illuminate the exposures.

This amazing creation is by Dan Barton, an Oxfordshire artist.  It’s a wicker man, burnt at the Oxford round table fireworks display in Headington.  For more information about this venture go to http://wickermanoxford.co.uk/

Extreme close up of the head of the syrphid or hover fly, Eupeodes luniger, showing the structure of the compound eyes.  My interest in these creatures seems to be growing, and I’m still struggling to get the absolute maximum detail available with transmitted light. The more I see of insects, the more I admire them. Stacked using 110 images taken with a Nikon 10x DIC objective using flash. Nikon D300. Modified Lomo microscope with a short tube.

A friend of mine, Julian Barton, suggested that microscopy could be used to produce artistic as well as scientific images.  Sort of landscapes within the miniature world.  There is a good history of this, with Spike Walker being represented by the Wellcome Institute at an exhibition recently of his electron micrographs.  This is my first attempt.  Greenbottles (Lucilla Caesar) have an amazing irridescent quality when you see them, and it is just about possible to reproduce this photographically.  These two pics are of the abdomen and thorax of a greenbottle.  I think I like the first one best, due to its cartoon like quality, but comments are appreciated.  Julian, I hope this is what you meant.  Taken through a light microscope using a Nikon 10xDIC objective with reflected flash light.

Now this is a touching and tender scene for anyone who isn’t a gardener.  It’s a greenfly giving birth to one of many daughters on a rosebud. Within ten minutes there were several of these little beasts running around their mother.  She, meanwhile, just sat there eating throughout.  Taken using a zeiss luminar 25mm lens with the usual flash arrangement which picks up the colours being diffracted by the wings.  When I last looked, mother and daughter were doing well….

This creature is the common house fly, musca domestica. When you see them sitting on a piece of bread they are using that fearsome mouth to scrape and suck food from the bread, cheese, or anything else they might like…  It excretes a sort of liquid enzyme which digests the food on the surface before sucking the pre-digested liquid up though the tube.  These mouth-parts are always a bit grubby.  Pays to keep them off your food in the first place.  Now I’ve seen one up close I think I’ll be more careful.

Taken through a light microscope with a Nikon x10DIC .25 objective and stacked using a stack of thirty-four images.

Sometimes you take a picture which makes you want to throw everything else you’ve ever done away and just simply admire the majesty of nature.  I’ve posted a blow-up of the central portion of this picture to show the perfection that exists on such a small scale.  Taken through a light microscope using a Nikon DI 10x objective and using a stack of fifty images, this is a different sort of hoverfly to the one below.  This one is called Eupeodes corollae.  One of the most common flies in the garden this time of year.  Wonderful creature!

This beast is the common hoverfly, Melascaeava cinctella.  It has excellent vision, and extremely well developed compound eyes.  This photograph also shows the three small simple eyes, or ocelli, arranged in a triangle between the two enormous compound eyes.  Photographic image stack using a Zeiss Luminar 25mm on a standard light microscope.

This fscinating thing is one of those little green tendrils that plants extend looking for things to hold on to.  They are tightly coiled and extremely highly developed.  This one is from a white bryony plant, and the coils are so evenly spaced they seem to be man-made.  Nature had the curly telephone line long before we did.