Caught on Camera

Most of the time, Levon Biss can be found snapping photos of world-famous athletes or movie stars for international advertising campaigns. But recently he’s been focusing his camera on a completely different type of subject: insects. 

At the one-of-a-kind studio he designed at his home in London, England, Biss has attached a microscope lens to a camera to capture magnified photos of insects. Because each photo has such high resolution—the sharpness of an image—he can print enormous detailed shots of the tiny creatures. Some of his photos stand 3 meters (10 feet) tall—as tall as a one-story building.

Biss began by photographing bugs he found around his home and neighborhood. Then he showed samples of his work to entomologists—scientists who study insects—at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in England. They were so impressed that they gave Biss full access to the museum’s vast collection of exotic, preserved insect specimens. After more than two years of work, Biss is having a special exhibition of his photos, called Microsculpture, at the museum, now through October 30.

Biss explains the painstaking process of making images of insects that are larger than life—each of which takes between two and three weeks to complete.

I attach a lens with 10-times magnification to a camera and aim the camera at an insect mounted on a stage (see Insect Photographer at Work). The lens has a narrow depth of field—the distance between the nearest and farthest objects that appear sharp in an image. The amount that’s in focus is minuscule—just a sliver. So I have to move the camera at small increments and take about 8,000 individual photos to capture the whole insect.

I take all those photos by mounting my camera on an automated rail that moves slowly. The camera takes a picture, and then it moves forward to take another. I shoot one body part at a time—an antenna, a wing, an eyeball. Each section is like photographing an object for a still-life image: It requires specific lighting to make each part look its best. For instance, I use backlighting to illuminate a transparent wing from behind. That makes all of the wing structures clearer.

It takes two to three days to shoot the insect. Then it’s another four to five days to piece together the thousands of photos on my computer to create a full image, and another week and a half to do touch-ups.