Photographs, mainly in the form of slides, were taken on Fuji 200 and 400 ASA films. While this ASA is too fast to show fine detail because the film is too grainy, it was suitable for handheld operation of the camera, seldom in still conditions. I used a 100 mm macro lens with a 2X teleconverter tube (no lens so it functions as an extension tube) and a 2X magnifier or some combination of these elements. Depth of field is always a problem when taking close-ups of 3-dimensional objects, so many of the original pictures are not in sharp focus over the entire creature or object. (In addition, I am not always as steady as I would like to be.) Many pictures were unusable for this guide because the individual photographed was too small in the frame, too out of focus (due to my or the subject's motion), or was positioned at an unsatisfactory angle. Except for the pictures of the specimens included from the display case in the Visitor Center, the road-kill dragonflies and the picture of the wing scales of the Pipevine Swallowtail all pictures were taken under natural conditions in the field, most of the time with available light. I used the camera's flash unit for the night shots around the Visitor Center and occasionally as a fill flash during the daytime.
Since 2004 I have been using a digital camera to take my insect pictures. (I use the same lens and front magnifier as before.) There are two main advantages when doing arthropod photography. I can see much more detail in the digital images because the pixels are all the same size. This is a real advantage, and aids in identification. The camera has a 1.6x magnification factor in the full frame presentation. This is generally (but not always) a bonus with such small subject matter, because they now fill more of the frame.
The original pictures, whether on slides or on negatives, were scanned at 2400 pixels per inch using the transparency adaptor on an HP Scanjet 4500c series scanner using the software supplied by HP. Personally I felt that the software as supplied (2003) left a lot of room for improvement and the process seemed unnecessarily tedious and time consuming.
In general, this scanner does a satisfactory job of reproducing the images. The scans do not quite as sharp as the original images, perhaps due to the nature of the transparency adaptor and the fact that the image projected must pass through the glass platen. More problematic was an annoying color shift particularly evident in the night shots and daylight shadows. The scanned images tended to have a blue tint, not present in the originals. In some cases the automatic correction software at the scan level wanted to make the image even bluer. Some of this color shift could be corrected at the scan level, however the amount of the correction I applied (needed?) was not consistent. Sometimes the effect was obvious, other times less so. It was often difficult to tell from the small size of the preview images whether too much or too little had been done.
The images were processed with Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. Alterations were kept to a minimum. For the most part images were merely cropped, brightened and contrast enhanced. In some cases, further color correction was applied to take out the blue cast. Some were sharpened, but the effect of this is not really noticeable except in a few cases from the fully displayed images - the Odonate image of the Common Green Darner is perhaps the most striking example (sharpening enhances the granulation - in the original, the dragonfly is very small so this image is the most magnified). In some cases, I eliminated dust marks and scratches with the clone tool, but in most cases the changes only applied to the background. The colors in the pictures may not match the prints in the hardcopy book exactly, however they are not significantly changed and agree closely with the originals.
The colors do not seem quite as vivid to me on my laptop as they appear on the originals. They do seem to have more intensity on regular monitors however.
The final images were compressed and saved as jpg images. For the most part, the compressed images range from about 30k to 130k depending on the size and amount of detail present.
Most of the images displayed within each species entry are set to display at 50% of the screen width. This works well for horizontal images but not for the vertical ones so I have used a smaller width for the vertical images. You can click either on an image or use the gallery in order to get the full image. Many of the pictures overfill my screen when viewed at full resolution.
Note: This is a personal web site and is not affiliated with the National Park Service or Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Contact information for the author, Ron Lyons, is accessible through the Index Page referenced below. Thank you.