Mind-blowing, magnified portraits of insects | Levon Biss | Summary and Q&A

TL;DR

This is the story of how a photographer found his extraordinary subject through the curiosity of his young son.

Key Insights

• 📷 Despite a successful career photographing global campaigns and icons, the speaker felt unfulfilled and concerned about the disposable nature of digital photography.
• 🔍 The speaker realized the power of looking at the world with childlike curiosity and sought to present the familiar in a new and engaging way.
• 🔎 With his son's curiosity and a ground beetle as his subject, the speaker began the Microsculpture Project, discovering extraordinary beauty in the ordinary.
• 🔬 The speaker used his knowledge of photographic lighting and creative control to capture the intricate details of small insects, working section by section to create fully focused and beautifully lit images.
• 📸 Each image is composed of thousands of shots and takes around three and a half weeks to create, resulting in high-resolution prints that can be explored digitally to reveal microscopic detail.
• 🎨 The project's website allows viewers to immerse themselves in the full-scale images, providing a unique educational tool for art and biology classes.
• 🌍 The Microsculpture Project has received positive feedback and is being used by teachers around the world, with children's reactions at exhibitions inspiring wonder and curiosity.
• 🌟 The speaker's validation came when entrusted with photographing a shield bug brought back by Charles Darwin, solidifying the worth and value of his images.

Transcript

So, I had been a photographer for 18 years before I began the Microsculpture Project. And in that time, I had shot global ad campaigns, I had the opportunity to photograph some of my generation's icons, and I was traveling the world. I got to a point in my career that I dreamed of getting to, and yet, for some reason, I still felt a little bit unfu... Read More

Questions & Answers

Q: What inspired the photographer to start the Microsculpture Project?

The photographer felt unfulfilled despite his successful career in photography and wanted to produce images that had a sense of worth again. He was also concerned about the disposable nature of photography in the digital world.

Q: How did the photographer discover his first subject for the Microsculpture Project?

The photographer's son brought in a ground beetle from the garden and they decided to look at it under a microscope. When the photographer saw the intricate details of the beetle, it reminded him of a galaxy and he was blown away by its beauty.

Q: How did the photographer approach photographing the insects for the project?

The photographer split each insect into multiple sections and treated each section like a small still life. He used different lighting setups depending on the specific section he was photographing, ensuring each section looked as beautiful as possible. He then used a rail to move the camera in between each shot and create a deep stack of focused images.

Q: How long does it take to create each image for the Microsculpture Project?

Each image is made up of thousands of separate shots and takes about three-and-a-half weeks to create. The file sizes are around four gigabytes on average, providing plenty of information for printing. At exhibitions, the prints can be as long as three meters or even nine meters.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The speaker, a photographer, felt unfulfilled despite his successful career shooting global ad campaigns and iconic figures.

• The speaker's curiosity and desire to create images with a sense of worth led him to start the Microsculpture Project.

• The project involves photographing insects from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History's collection in great detail using specialized lighting techniques and automated camera movements.