Places to find Insects for Macro Photography

As I mentioned in my post answering some frequently asked questions about Focus Stacking Macro Photography – typically the insects used are no longer alive. That doesn’t mean that you must kill them – all you need to do is learn how to find and collect the ones that are no longer alive.

Many times I really wanted to do some macro photography and I searched for insects and I just couldn’t find any…

But I was forgetting two very important things – first – I need to be checking the right places and second – the specimen are not just going to appear and line up for me to do my photography – finding them will be random so I must check the places regularly.

Here are my suggestions for places to check:

• The Ceiling Light Chrome

This is the first place I check and the best thing is – I don’t even need to leave the house… No matter what time of the year it is – bugs are attracted to light, so you can find insects there because they will get trapped (if you have a similar ceiling light chrome).

When I checked mine it was full of bugs – enough to photograph for months.

Places to Find Insects for Macro Photography

• Home plants

I find a lot of bugs in the plants at home, they like sitting there… and sometimes they get stuck… so I just wait.

• Garden

If you are one of the lucky ones and you have a backyard garden you can find plenty of insects there 🙂

• Spider webs

Spiders eat flies and other small insects so occasionally you can find some trapped in the spider web, just make sure you are not stealing the spider’s lunch too often 😉

• Last case scenario – carry a little box with you.

If you have checked all the places above and still your search wasn’t successful – last thing you can do is bring a tiny box with you and try to store some bugs that you may come across while you are out and about.

My Tiny Bug Box

What you need to keep in mind is that insects decay pretty fast – the older they are the dryer the eyes look but you can still do the ‘zombie’ effect.

Just be careful because they also fall apart very easily and you may end up with a headless fly…

Head just fell off while I was dusting it… and I was very gentle too…

I also wanted to add this post as a reminder to all the people that frown upon macro photographers – for killing insects for a ‘frivolous cause’. Look the truth is that as humans, deliberately or not we do end up killing insects. I found about a 100 insects in that ceiling light chrome- that is 10 times more than all the bugs I used for my macro photography so far… and what if I had a car ? I just wish that people can be a bit more aware and won’t judge…

Feel free to leave a comment if you can think of more places or ways to find insects that are suitable for macro photography.

Thank you for stopping by,
till next time 🙂