Hi there you all!

Yep, it is a fact, 2019 is here. To celebrate this new year I’d like to share the photo below with you. It was taken last May, during my holiday in Tenerife. Tenerife is great. I saw a lot, I enjoyed a lot.

Now generally to see and photograph a lot you would think you have to walk or move a lot. You would think you have to visit this and that place, preferably as much as possible within one day, while carrying heavy photo gear with you. For a while now I am realizing that this is so NOT the case with me. Walking and enjoying, a big yes! But walking and photographing my favorite macro subjects such as insects and flowers, a big no! 

Small subjects require time and rest. And this is exactly what I had during my ‘relax’ hours in the garden of our hotel. The colors and form of this beautiful tropical flower called Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia reginae) attracted me to come closer. It was only after zooming in on my Iphone shot that I noticed little ants on the plant. 

This was the moment! Time to get my macro lens and get serious! Easier said than done though. Man, these ants were small. And man, they were fast! And yep, I like to work with open aperture because of the desired small depth of field and also because this is the only way to shoot with short shutter speeds which I need for these little speedy gonzales types. But I also work with a full frame sensor (Nikon D610) meaning my field of depth with open aperture is REALLY small. Any way, no one said it would be easy and a few hours and days later I finally managed to take some satisfying photos. The photo below is one of them, I call it: ‘Tiny and mighty’.

Wishing you all a great 2019, with hopefully some time and rest to get caught and surprised by our tiny and mighty insects!