almost passing for an aerial photo over some trees, ocean, and a smoldering volcano, this world was actually discovered on the belly of a small fly - more specifically a tiny Blue-green Long-legged fly (Condylostylus). the micro-hairs along the contours of it's abdomen now look like a forest of trees covering the hills of a tropical island. the way the light reflects of the fly's metallic-like surface, gave us the ocean and rainforest colour palette. and the volcano is actually a hair pore with the hair shaft going out of focus toward the camera, giving the appearance of rising column of smoke. the width of this shot covers 0.0126 inches which is the thickness of a playing card.

a lovely and unique treasure discovered while roaming the hawaiian rainforest

rarely does an insect stay put long enough for us to go through our setup process, but this large dragonfly was very trusting and didn't move while we choose a good macro lens, took light readings, test exposures, and finally this shot.

Bamboo gate in Japanese garden

I am a personal fan of lots of foliage. I maintain several quite large house plants but they just don't compare to standing amongst a rain-forest. This was captured along the way to Hanna, a remote southern town on Maui.

foliage on the tropical island of Guam

if you ever wondered what a photography studio does on a slow day... well, we photograph our toothbrush, and here it is. this is a close-up shot of the bristles on a toothbrush (Oral-B if you're curious) and each one has a diameter of 0.0075 inches (thickness of 1½ sheets of paper). we found it interesting that the plastic bristles start out very smooth on the handle end (seen at top) and then have a rougher texture on the brushing end (seen at bottom).

Whenever I'm in the mood to photograph butterflies, I try to seek out large clusters of small deep-throated flowers. They seem designed just for the mouths of butterflies and during the right season, it can make for some great photos. Typically, I setup near these flowers with all my readings made in advance and hope for something like this beautiful Clipper butterfly of the Philippines to land in front of me.