Microsculpture – Tiny Insects Magnified to 3 Meters Prints

The following video shows some of the behind the scenes work which led to a special exhibition which combines science and art. The works, captured by U.K. photographer Levon Biss over a period of several months, takes some spectacular insects no more than 10mm in length and show them as a 3 meter prints, revealing minute detail and allowing the viewer to take in the structure of the insect in its entirety like never before.

The exhibition includes 22 giant prints of unique looking insects which are part of the huge collection of  Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Biss spent weeks working on each print which is made out of a composition of thousands of “slices” of different focus areas of each inspect (using focus stacking technique).

As you can see in the video which shows Biss’ setup – he used a microscope lens attached to a Nikon macro lens together with a StackShot robot and a full setup that allowed him to move the sample of the insect very accurately forward and backwards. In terms of lights he used two diffused Bowens strobes with some mini reflector made of tin foil to bounce light to the insect body, eyes and wings which boosted their amazing colors.

If you happen to be in the U.K. between 27th May to October 2016 stop by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and take a look at Biss giant insects for yourself in a way you have never seen insects before – more on the exhibition website.

If you are into macro photography we highly recommend that you check out our macro photography section and our extensive article about super macro photography and the Nanoha 5X lens review.

You can find many more videos of interesting photographers and their work on LensVid’s photographers channel.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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